


Turn Your Face Towards the Sun

by ChibiSquirt



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Actual Dragons, Knitting, Krem Maybe Has a Thing for the Deadly, Mostly Gen, Other, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:01:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5846041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krem is grievously injured while on a mission, and somehow, he has to make his way back to Skyhold.  Travel is boring, and healing is boring and painful, but it does at least give you time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dragon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Heroes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663965) by [MissjuliaMiriam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam). 



> There is an absolutely wonderful series called Willow: http://archiveofourown.org/series/279918
> 
> I read that, and fell in love, but I wanted a character interaction that was decidedly off-road for the works in that series. So I wrote this. It's terribly self-indulgent, but hopefully it will make others as happy as it makes me. 
> 
> I'm trying to write this so that you don't need to have read that series for it to make sense; while that does render it necessarily gen, there aren't too many places otherwise where it's an issue.

 

Later, they would all agree it had been a good idea.  In fact, once the shouting was done (and between the Chief and Commander Cullen, there was a lot of shouting), they decided to continue it; the rough start did set them back a bit, though.

 

Essentially, the plan was to get us to teach everyone else how to think like Chargers.  Cullen had noticed that we--that is, the non-mage Chargers--all worked well with Dalish, and our heavy load of specialists allowed us to adapt quickly to challenges which would stymie a standard foot troop.  Well, that’s why you hire the Chargers instead of, say, the Rushing Druffs.  That, and because the Chargers have never been the subject of a rumor involving the Compt du Chienne’s wife, even though, unlike Captain Hank of the Druffs, the Iron Bull actually went there.  

 

So Cullen split his officers into groups of six, tacked a Charger onto each group, and sent us out on small missions together to promote bonding and chaos.  Mostly chaos, to be honest, but nobody minded too much.  

 

Mostly, it was working well.  It took us about five minutes after Bull and Cullen laid the plan out to turn it into a competition, and Rocky was definitely winning.  Stitches was definitely losing, which surprised us, because we all expected  _ Dalish  _ to do the worst, even Dalish did.  But Rocky’s band had never worked with anything  _ like  _ a demolitionist before, and pretty much everyone’s worked with a healer, so maybe Rocky was benefiting from a lack of preconceived notions. 

 

My band was somewhere in the middle until we were suddenly dead last, and honestly, that’s probably only because I was in charge.  Gertrude was alright (solid head on her shoulders), and Anise was amazing, but Skiff, Charles and Jean were pathetic, each more inattentive than the last, and cocky with it to boot.  Petros was a damn good mage, but he was trying so hard to pretend that he wasn’t a runaway from the Imperium that he wouldn’t talk to any of us, and it was hard to trust him to have our backs, even though he did.  So we did alright, but if I’d had Dalish’s team, I’d have won.

 

The missions were small ones:  Acquire horses from a trader on the coast.  Find a source of iron for the Skyhold armories.  Escort a group of Tranquil from a Chantry in southern Ferelden to a Chantry in southern Orlais.  That sort of thing.  Cullen thought about assigning the missions at random, then decided to let us volunteer for them, instead, so it’s pretty much all my fault that we were the ones who drew, “investigate the old battlefield at Ostagar for loot and traces of Wardens”.  

 

I figured, we’d probably lose points for technical success (because I was damned sure there weren’t going to be any Wardens there, and more than ten years out from the battle, not much loot, either), but we would make it up with points for team bonding (because it’s a long damn trip).  We would  _ definitely  _ win points for thinking outside the box, because I remembered that, besides the battlefield, there were these old ruins there that, for some reason, no one talks about.  We had a mage-and-a-half (Gertrude had been a scholar before she joined the Inquisition), and I brought plenty of rope, so I figured, we would explore the ruins, put together a map, Gertrude could do her Brother Genitivi act, and we’d come home with a whole bunch of extra.  Plus, Charles was always sketching things, so we could probably bring back some pictures, too.

 

It was a good plan, and it probably would have gone down like clockwork, except there was a fucking dragon in the ruins, and it took out our mage on its first pass.  Which was terrible on two counts:  first, because I could’ve liked Petros if he’d ever figured out that I was the last person who would turn him in, but also because he was probably the only one there who could’ve gotten the rest of us out.  

 

Skiff (short for Lord Skiffington, and he hated the nickname; you now know all you’ll ever need to) panicked as soon as he saw the beast, and ran for it.  We were on this big long bridge when it surfaced, and now that I looked, I could see that there were more scorch marks around me, so I think it was probably using the bridge as its own, personal, buffet table.  So Skiff charged ahead, possibly thinking he could out-run it, and it flew down to the far end and took him out neat, no fire, even:  just a tail,  _ whip!,  _ and he was down.  

 

That’s when I realized that our mission was now, “Escape the dragon”, and bloody forget sketching the ruins.

 

The thing about dragonlings, which I was hoping I could extrapolate to dragons because I’d  _ never fucking faced one  _ and otherwise I wouldn’t even have  _ one  _ clue, was that they were tough and they could hurt you, but the real danger was their speed, which seemed impossible given the size of even the little ones.  We lost a Charger that way once upon a time, where he flanked a dragonling and then suddenly there were its teeth, so I wasn’t likely to forget it.  So the first thing I did was send Anise about a hundred feet up the bridge towards where the Ferelden camp had been, with instructions to hit the dragon, disappear, and do it again, distracting it when it tried to come after the rest of us.  If we could keep it dancing, we might present too many targets to catch.

 

Gertrude, Charles, and Jean, I sent up the bridge towards the tower, with instructions to take the first shelter they could.  I figured, other than Anise (who was silent death with two daggers, and just as good with her bow), I was the fastest one in the group, and though I wasn’t  _ that  _ fast, it would be enough to play Target Dummy.  The others were going to have to take cover.  

 

It was a half-assed plan, but it was the best I could do on zero notice, and it was a lot better than anything that twat Skiff could’ve come up with.  

 

The crazy thing was, it was working, if we define “working” as “we didn’t all die immediately”.  

 

The way the bridge was set up, the dragon would come from one side or another to target us.  It wasn’t huge the way the dragon Bull took on with the Inquisitor was; either the Bull was exaggerating, or, more likely, this one wasn’t full-grown.  Still, we were close enough to the tower-ruins that it couldn’t comfortably come along the bridge, especially since Anise was “upstream” of us, and stealthed, and the couple time it tried to come “downstream” at us, she put a fucking arrow  _ right in its eye.  _

 

(I kind of loved Anise.  I couldn’t think what she was doing with the Inquisition, except that she told me later she was supposed to be at the Conclave, but she’d had food poisoning and stayed behind, so it may have been survivor's guilt.)

 

So the dragon would try to go cross-wise across the bridge, targeting me, and I would roll to dodge flames, Anise would shoot it, it would try to hit  _ her  _ with flames and  _ she  _ would dodge, and as long as I was able to avoid the claws and teeth and tail, we would all be good.  Then the dragon’s back would be towards us, so everybody would run up the bridge another twenty-five yards to the next bit of cover before the dragon turned and repeated itself.  

 

It did get me a couple of times (I was definitely going to have some impressive bruising on my chest), but only with the tail, and there, not even the spiky bit.  

 

I got lucky, and I knew it.

 

The crazy thing was, as bloody awful as it was that Skiff was out cold on the other side of the bridge and Petros was a pile of charcoal near the center, we were doing  _ really well.   _ This wasn’t the Inquisitor’s group; we didn’t have Madame du Fer or the Iron Bull or a kid who might or might not be a demon in human form.  I didn’t have a sickly-green tie to the Fade on my left hand.  Everything we were doing, we were doing with arrows, guile, and a big-ass maul, and we’d only lost two.  I was starting to think we only  _ would  _ lose two, that the rest of us would make it.

 

Then Charles reached the other side, and the dragon turned quickly enough to see him duck, safe, inside a semi-fallen stone building that the lizard couldn’t enter, and I realized how deep we were in it, because the dragon  _ knew what that meant. _

 

This beast, which sounded brainless, like the lovechild of a bear and a thunderstorm, had enough intelligence to know that we were trying to escape it, and enough cunning to find a way around our strategy.  

 

It changed direction, heading upwards, then came down in a dive, reminding us that there were three dimensions of exposure here, not just two.  Gertrude was under this huge fallen rock, but Jean had sheltered flat against what would have been the lee wall of the bridge, had the beast made a pass; with it diving, he was totally exposed, and totally immobile.  

 

At least it was quick.

 

The dragon pivoted, fast, and it makes sense that it could pull out of a dive faster than it could turn left or right, but at that moment I wasn’t really thinking about the physiology of it. Mostly, I was thinking swear words, while trying to figure out if I wanted to dodge ineffectively to the left or the right.  With me between Anise and the dragon, nothing she did would distract it from me, so I was hoping like hell she stayed hidden and far away as I backed away from the lizard.

 

The dragon landed, left back leg less than two yards from where Gertrude lay, cowering, under her rock, front legs eight feet apart and ten feet in front of me, and it towered over me.  It probably wasn’t trying to look intimidating; it probably wasn’t bearing a grudge because I’d kept it from its snack.  It probably  _ was  _ pissed off, though, which, if you’re asking, is my explanation for why it snapped at me instead of torching me.  

 

I blocked with the maul.

 

Even more than I loved Anise, I loved my maul, and for a lot of the same reasons.  It’s a hell of a weapon:  heavy stone head, even heavier counter-balance; part of the reason I was so damn fast was that the maul slowed me down, and I’d had to learn to counter that.  Point is, the maul had momentum, and the dragon’s head on its neck at that angle was a lever.  My blow was enough to deflect its head significantly, snapping its chin up towards the sun.

 

I would be impressed with myself later; I did a diving roll forward between its front legs, pulled Gertrude out from her rock, and we sprinted between its back legs.  The dragon was furious, tail swishing like an angry cat, but Gertrude was fast and clever and, let’s be honest,  _ really  _ short, so she could duck her way to safety next to Charles.  

 

I wasn’t so lucky; ten feet from solid ground, the tail caught me.  My feet left the earth and the maul flew from my hand, and I went over the side of the bridge.  

 

You know how they say that, right before you die, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes?  Well, it’s bullshit; what really happens is that everything slows down.  Time passes like flowing honey, and you’re aware of your breath.  Your sight dims, but sound amplifies.  Lastly, you get this feeling of total peace, like you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and when you die (in the next few seconds), it will be exactly what is supposed to happen.  

 

I hope I’m describing this alright, because it doesn’t really make any sense, but I’ve been certain I was going to die on three separate occasions, and it always happens like this.  This time, I watched my maul float beside me in a darkening sky, listened to the impossibly-loud rush of wind, and felt content.  I was at precisely the right point in the universe, and maybe my death would somehow enable the others to escape, and that was why I was supposed to die.  Because I was supposed to die, here, now, in these circumstances; I was certain of it.

  
I hit the earth in what was technically the Korcari Wilds, with a really impressive number of crunches.  


	2. Daisy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hard part of this chapter was definitely writing Krem as Krem, and not accidentally writing him as Mildmay instead.
> 
> I have another chapter done, but I'm going to save it, a) because I'm concerned that I'll go in a direction that causes a contradiction, and b) because there's probably going to be about 7-9 chapters in this thing, and I don't want to run out of time to write them.

  
  
  


I didn’t die.

 

I didn’t so much return to consciousness as return to an _ awareness of pain _ .  I must have landed on my left side, because it ran from my head to my ankle, same side, all the way down.  Someone coaxed me to drink something--elfroot and some other stuff, but once you know the taste of elfroot, there’s really no mistaking it--and I gratefully swam back down into darkness.

  
  
  


 

The next time I woke, it was night, which I knew because the air was cool and dry.  I didn’t try to move--I had a feeling that wouldn’t end well--but I did open my eyes and look as far around as I could.  I was lying propped up a bit, which surprised me, until I realized that there was a smell in the air like soup, and whoever-it-was had probably sat me up so that I didn’t choke.  

 

I was in a cave.  To the left, there was a small fire, quite neat, with an equally tidy-sized cauldron on it, presumably the source of the soup-smell.  Moving slowly to the right and further back, there was a wagon such as traders use, too small for a couple, so I had a single rescuer/captor person.  The wagon pretty much killed any hope that Anise and the others had rescued me, though.  Closer again, a basket with a linen tossed over top; sometime metal glinted inside.  Right of center…

 

...The exit to the cave.  It was hung with a curtain, vines mostly with some moss woven in, and with the firelight flickering on it, I couldn’t see a thing beyond it.  My breath came faster in my chest, though, with the thought of getting out, on the road, towards home.

 

I looked away from the exit, kept looking around, and there, at the edge of my range, was a little twist in the rock that signalled another chamber of the cave.  Also, a pile of what looked a lot like my armor, clothes, smalls, and binder.

 

Wait.  

 

Was I naked?   
  


I couldn’t see at this angle; I was going to have to raise my head, or my hand, or something.  There was an all-over throbbing, though, that told me that was a very bad idea, and while I wrestled with the decision (pain, or pants?), the curtain over the door twitched aside and a dark-haired Dalish woman entered with a lot of herbs in her arms.  

 

She came in distracted, shaking her head at something, and tossed her herbs down beside the pot, less than two feet away before she noticed my eyes on her.  She immediately jumped back, exclaiming, “Oh!  You’re awake!  Ow!”  She had hit her head on the ceiling.

 

I swallowed.  “Ow,” I agreed.  My voice came out too high, and I cleared my throat, though my head pounded resentfully in response.  

 

“Oh!” she said again, this time kneeling between me and the fire.  “I have some more potion for you; here.”  She reached out of my field of vision and came up with a bottle of what I recognized as a standard-issue healing draft like you can buy all over Thedas.  “I bought it,” she babbled, “I know some herbcraft, and I can slip spindleweed in the stew and all, but it takes a mage to make a real potion.”  She watched me carefully as I swallowed two spoonfuls, then tucked the bottle down beside me again.  

 

She came up with water next, and I drank it gratefully, two cold mugs of it.  By the time I was done, my eyes were closing on their own, and she said, “Healing always makes me tired.  You go ahead and sleep, there’ll be stew when you wake.”   

  
  
  


 

There was in fact stew when I woke, coney-based if I was any judge, and she hadn’t been lying about slipping spindleweed in it.  She hadn’t mentioned the prophet’s laurel, but Maker, I needed all the herbcraft I could get, and at any rate I wasn’t in a position to complain.  

 

She spooned the last bite into my mouth, and I swallowed.  “Thank you,” I said, but rocked my head back and forth when she came up with the healing potion.  

 

She didn’t frown,, but did look anxiously confused.  “No…?” she asked.

 

“No,” I said firmly, glad to note my voice behaving again.  “I have some questions.”  

 

She nodded.  “Right,” she said, settling in tailor-style beside me, rather than kneeling.  “Me, too.”

 

“First:  am I naked?”

 

She busted out laughing, and she had a really great laugh:  one of those trills, but not fake like the ladies in Orlais do it.  It might have been the Dalish accent, it might have been that she seemed kind of young-at-heart, it might have been the edge of a giggle, but whatever it was, it made you want to laugh with her.  I was in too much pain to laugh, but I could and did smile, and I didn’t take offense when she calmed down enough to say, “Well, yes.  You’re all kinds of banged up, you know, I’d never have been able to bandage you with all that on.”  And she jerked her head at the pile of clothes and armor.  

 

I let my head roll to the right to look longingly at them, then rolled it back towards her.  “How banged up?” My no-nonsense, I’m-the-Lieutenant-so-don’t-bullshit-me voice, in case she needed it.

 

It didn’t seem to ruffle her too much.  “Broken leg,” she said.  “Broken arm.  _ Other  _ broken arm, too, although that’s just a fracture, should be fine with a couple more potions.  Dislocated clavicle, I reduced it, but I had to drag you in here before I got to it; the swelling should last for a while.  Four or five broken ribs on the left, one on the right.  Fractured pelvis.

 

“Cracked skull, but not nearly as bad as you’d think; I’d guess you hit on your side, and the head actually bounced down second, like this:”  She mimed running into a wall,  _ then  _ flipped her head towards the wall-shoulder and bounced it back.  “Concussion.  Lots of bleeding, lots of bruising.  Multiple lacs and abrasions.

 

“Stunningly, no major organ damage.  No punctured lungs from those ribs.  No concussion-pulverization of your heart, spleen, or live.  No gut wound.  

 

“And, of course, you managed to fall within fifty feet of this cave, so I didn’t have to drag you too far.  All of which leads me to think you’re probably the luckiest woman I know.”  She smiled, big and warm and open, but I couldn’t really smile back.  

 

Most people who’ve seen my breasts don’t believe me when I say I’m a man.

 

“I’m lucky,” I agreed instead.  It was the best I could do.

 

Her smile faded, and she looked puzzled; she could tell that something she said was bothering me, but not what.  “Is it my turn?” she asked.  “For a question, I mean.”

 

“Sure,” I said.

 

“What’s your name?” she asks, and suddenly I felt like an ass.  

 

“Ah, Maker, I really don’t have any manners, do I?  Sorry.  I’m--”  I suddenly realized that I know absolutely nothing about this woman, other than that she was hanging out in the Korcari Wilds, and that it might not be advantageous to tell her I was with the Inquisition.  Or a Tevinter.  There were too many people too angry about sides to identify myself as being on one, especially since I couldn’t fight off a gnat.  “I’m Krem.  I’m a Lieutenant in a mercenary troop, the Bull’s Chargers.  I was supposed to be training some soldiers for our employer when we tripped over big, mean, and firey up there.”  I jerked my head up half an inch, indicating the bridge.

 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, only a bit rhetorically, and of  _ course  _ of all the possible rescuers, I  _ would  _ get the crazy one.

 

I raised my eyebrows promptingly.  

 

“Oh!  I’m Daisy,” she answered, and smiled again like Daisy was the best damn name on the planet.  

 

Impossible not to smile back.  “Hi, Daisy,” I said, “And what…”  I paused, unsure how to ask it because prying into the business of someone who just saved your life is rude, then said, “ _ Something  _ brought you out to the Wilds…”

 

She sounded embarrassed when she laughed this time.  “Well, yes.”  She shifted her weight from side to side; definitely embarrassed.  “I was…  well… I was looking for a legend.”  

 

My brows went up again.

 

“I’ve heard it said that Asha’Bellanar was once near this place,” she admitted, and I got the impression the didn’t want to seem as excited as she really, really was. “Although, obviously, she’s not any more.  But what if she left something  _ behind _ ?”  She rocked backwards, shrugging a little.  “I have no master but myself, and no schedule to keep to.  And it’s been too long since I was among my own people.  It seemed like a fine idea to tarry a while here and search out the abode of one of our legends.”

 

I would have found that more wholesome if I didn’t know who Asha’Bellanar meant.  “You were seeking out the Witch of the Wilds?” I asked, and while I wasn’t rude with it, my incredulity was pretty plain.

 

Daisy tucked her hands together primly in her lap.  “You know,” she said, “I find that name very disrespectful.”

 

I was not reassured.  

 

Daisy sighed, and stood up, going to tidy up the fireplace.  “She’s not there anymore, you know.  She was killed during the Fifth Blight.”

 

“She was?”  

 

“That’s what I heard, anyway,” Daisy said hastily.  “But just to stand where she stood, in the footsteps of a legend--!”  She looked wistful for a moment, then sighed, looking so much like a disappointed housewife that I wanted to laugh.  “Still,” she said, “there are more dangers than powerful spirits in this part of the country.” 

 

“Like dragons,” I agreed pointedly.

 

“And falls,” she shot back.

 

I  _ did  _ laugh, that time.  It hurt as much as I’d been afraid it would.

 

“Right,” she said, picking up the linen-covered basket and sitting down on my other side, my right side.  “Shall we do another?”

 

“Another what?” I asked, watching her shake out a scarf, two needles, and a ball of yarn.  

 

“Another round of questions, silly,” she said.  “I’ll go first this time.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“Where do you want me to take you?”

 

“Take me?”  I’m sure I looked confused.  Possibly also alarmed.

 

“Well, yes,” she said.  “I have this splendid wagon with lots of soft fabrics in it--I’m a trader, did I tell you that?”  I shook my head.  “I buy pretty fabrics and thread, and I make little things, like hankies and scarves, muffs a lot, and I embroider them with things to make them decorative, as well as useful.  Village women love them, and buy them right up, it’s usually the only nice thing they have.”

 

“That sounds nice.”  It sounded damned dull, but I wasn’t going to say that.

 

“Oh, it is!  I meet so many lovely people.  But anyway, I travel, the wagon is well-sprung and well-cushioned, and  _ you _ probably have people you want to get to, and I won’t believe they’re in the ruins of Ostagar.”

 

“They’re not, “ I agreed, stalling for time.  I was pretty sure if I said, "To Skyhold,” she would guess I was with the Inquisition, and that still might not be safe.  A better plan right now was to tag along with her until I healed up enough to get myself home, so I asked instead, “Where were you going before you found me?” Then, thinking of it, I added, “Also, it is very kind of you to offer to take me anywhere.”

 

“Well, it’s nice to have some company for once!” she answered.  “I am…”  Her hands stilled on the knitting, and she frowned at it.  “Dropped stitch,” she muttered, and re-made the row in silence.  “I’ve been on my own for a while now,” she finally admitted.  “My clan, my friends…  They’re so far away.”  Her eyebrows were tilting up in the center; it was almost mesmerizing how transparent her face was.  “Have you been travelling a lot?”

 

“Fair bit,” I answered.  “Not alone like you, though.  I’ve been with my company, with…”  She looked up, and pinned in the grass-green of her eyes, I stammered, “I… I have a… someone.”  She nodded, and looked back at her knitting.  “...So I probably don’t have the same loneliness you do,” I finished, feeling guilty about it even though it wasn’t my fault.

 

“But you’ve seen,” she reasoned, a  _ non sequitur  _ until she added, “You’ve seen how  _ awful  _ it is out there.  The war with the mages and templars, it was terrible!”

 

“Yes, it was.  I fought in it.”  I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of my voice.  Even with a company like the Chargers, you see a lot of things you don’t want to see in a civil war, and this was a civil war involving  _ five countries. _

 

“Everyone says the Inquisition are the only ones helping,” she said, and  _ now  _ I knew where this was going, and thank the Maker for it, because if she’d been against us, she could have killed me without even touching me--all she would have to do is  _ leave _ .  “I thought, well, I’m just a girl with some pretty muffs and a wagon, but maybe I could help somehow.”  She turned the scarf she was knitting around, smoothing the stitches with an absent, petting gesture before beginning again.  “I used to carry messages--for money, I mean, and no one ever suspected me.  I’d be happy to do it for people who are actually making a difference.”  

 

She looked tentative and uncertain, and a little frightened, probably for the same reason I had been.  A thought occurred to me:  “Is that why you were trying to raid Flemeth’s hut, so you could show up  _ with  _ something?” I asked, and she blushed.  

 

“So, at any rate, if you weren’t here, I’d be going to Skyhold,” she answered (or rather, _didn't_ answer), and shrugged one shoulder.  

 

The left side of my mouth quirked up.  “Well, then I guess I’m going to Skyhold, too,” I said, and her smile beamed out at me once more.  She knit in silence for a while, turning the scarf around twice more, then reminded me, “It’s your turn.”

 

I had been dozing, lulled by the fire and the warmth (she had about five blankets on top of me), and by the “I’m not going to kill you”-ness of her.  I snorted, coming awake again.  “My turn for what?”

 

“To ask a question.”

 

“All right,” I agreed, and I actually did have one, because there were parts of Daisy which did not make sense.  “What is a Dalish lass, who isn’t a mage, doing in the middle of Ostagar, which is close by to nowhere, without her clan, and sounding like she’s been on her own for years?”

 

Daisy’s hands stilled on the knitting, and she bit her lip, but she met my eyes without blinking.  “I’ve already told you why I’m in Ostagar,” she answered, voice soft.  “So your question is really, ‘Where’s the rest of my clan?’”  

 

I nodded, cautiously.  

 

“They kicked me out,” she said with the bluntness of old hurts.  “It’s very easy to be exiled from a Dalish clan, you know; you just have to do something the Keeper does not approve.  I used to think that was strength, that our stringency would keep us pure.”  She gave the one-shoulder shrug again. “Now, I believe it makes us brittle, instead.”  

 

She shook off both the mood and the scarf, and reached over to the healing potion between me and the fire, giving me a questioning look.  I nodded gratefully, and she poured out a spoonful again.  

 

Daisy stretched absentmindedly before climbing into the wagon where, apparently, she was sleeping, and as her long sleeves slid back, I noted with some surprise a number of deep, red scratches on both of her arms around the wrists.  Maybe she had tangled with brambles while getting me to the cave?

 

And why had she rescued me, anyway?  Not that I wasn’t grateful, but the world tended to chew up and spit out people with that kind of generosity, and anyway, I suspected Daisy had a core of steel.  

 

Daisy's potion worked quickly, but as I was drifting off, I was struck by her substantial resemblance to the Inquisitor.  More than the physical, although there was that, too:  both pale-skinned, dark haired, green eyed, and slim even for elves.  Lavellan was also a Dalish elf away from his clan, though somewhat younger than Daisy.  And he had been away from his clan, as I understood it, with their full support and blessing, so perhaps the parallels weren’t so clear.  I suspected, though, in my last thought before unconsciousness, that if the two were ever to meet, it might give Daisy some steadying hand of comfort. 


	3. Interlude:  Cullen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlude now, I'll have a proper chapter up tonight. I'm pretty sure this thing will have 8 chapters and 3 interludes; chapters 1-5 are complete, a 6 is about 600 words away. Interlude 1 done, 2 in progress, 3 not even started but probably the easiest of the lot. 
> 
> Also, gave up on not referencing Willow too much, because a) it's a really good fic and it's fine to reference it and b) it was getting pretty Gothic.

  
  
  


“Commander?”  The young elf hesitated, her head half-in, half-out of Cullen’s office, and the rest of her not even that close.  Cullen rubbed his head,  _ again _ , because while it was hurting more than usual today, he’d also been snapping more than usual, and that was no good to anyone.

 

“Come in,” he said, and his voice sounded exhausted, too.  He shook his head and drank some tea, and tried not to pass for not-half-dead.  

 

“Message from Sister Nightingale, Ser,” said the elf, passing him the note.  Cullen broke the seal on message, then read it with a lowering heart.  

 

The Bull was out with the Inquisitor, investigating some dwarven ruin in the Hinterlands.  Lieutenant Aclassi… would obviously not be able to deal with this.  Cullen closed his eyes and rubbed his temples again, then shook his head.  He’d liked Krem, who was straightforward and good natured, and who dealt with mages with a calm caution that Cullen had subtly been trying to emulate.  

 

Also, in a group composed of seven officers, three losses was an absolutely unacceptable number.

 

“How many of the Chargers are currently in Skyhold?” he asked the elf girl (Mira?  Nina?  Something like that).  

 

“Three, sir.”  Mir-Nin-Whatever had clearly snuck a look at the message, because she looked far too sympathetic.  Cullen made a mental note to tell Leliana;  _ she  _ could sort out whether reading the note deserved punishment or reward.  

  
“I assume they’re all at the Rest,” Cullen said.  He looked out the side door at the setting sun.  Well, he could use a drink, too, as it happened, and given who was most likely in command of the Chargers still in Skyhold, that was doubly, if not triply, true.  “I’ll tell them myself,” he decided; he wouldn’t have made much progress on his paperwork, anyway.


	4. Facade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promised chapter tonight. I'm done with Chapters 1-6, and Interludes 1 and 2. I'll proofread and publish one a day for the next few.
> 
> This is one of the three chapters I was really wanting to write when I started this thing, so hopefully it came out well.

  
  
  
  
  


Daisy gave me the good drugs:  by the time I woke again, it was mid-afternoon, my mouth tasted like ash, my throat was begging for water, my right arm felt whole, and I needed to piss.  Daisy had left a pitcher of water and an empty vial nearby to address the issues of water in and out; the arm, while not an issue, was a great relief.  The cauldron she typically used for dinner was also on my right side, filled with cold water.  Soap and a cloth were beside it, and I wondered absently as I washed how Daisy could possibly still be single, given that she was apparently the perfect woman because  _ Maker  _ did I need to be clean!

 

Daisy herself was nowhere to be seen.  Her knitting still flopped out of its basket, but the basket had been moved to the right, so apparently at some point this morning she had been working on it.  She hadn’t left me a note or anything, so she could have been fifteen feet or five miles away, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.  

 

I decided to risk it, and rocked myself over onto my right side.  The left-side ribs protested, but held, and my arm and leg, I finally noticed, had been splinted tightly and neatly with linen and tree limbs.  I took a good long look at myself, and apart from depth and abundance of purpling bruises, I didn’t seem to be doing too badly.  I was still helpless as a baby kitten, though.

 

Let’s not talk about the process of getting my clothes.  Let’s just say, I did a better-than-average impression of an earthworm, and leave it at that.  

 

By the time Daisy came back in, again muttering to herself, but this time her arms were full of books, not herbs, I was as dressed as I could get one-handed, which, it turned out, was not a lot:  my binder was on, but not laced, and my shirt was on properly on the right, but wouldn’t fit over the left, so I just kept the arm inside it and let the sleeve hang loose.  My smalls were loose enough to wear, but the pants would never fit over the splints.   I felt a lot more human, though.  

 

Daisy looked impressed, too, although she called me an idiot and pointed out that if I’d waited for her to get back, she could have helped me and it probably wouldn’t have hurt as much.  And that’s true, but then she’d have been looking at my chest while I struggled into the binder, and the less of that that occurred, the better.  I’d decided some time in the night that I could not make the nearly month-long journey to Skyhold with a woman who believed me to be of the same gender.  I would go crazy, or cry, and either one was a bad plan. I had to tell her, and soon.

 

She was a good sport about tightening the binder and straightening everything else.  She also ripped the left seam out of my pants from bottom hem to hip, then hemmed them up like lightning.  Lastly, she attached strips of fabric to each side at the knee and ankle, then tied them on over the splint.  I had a dim memory of trying to hem a doll’s dress as a small child, and I’m pretty sure she knocked out those pants in less time than it took me to sew one doll-sleeve.  

 

“That’s amazing,” I said honestly, and she looked up curiously.  I gestured at the pants she was tying on me because you can do  _ nothing  _ with one hand, and she ducked her head as if I’d embarrassed her.  

 

“It’s nothing,” she said, “just needles and thread and scissors.  You could do it, too, I’m sure you learnt to sew as a little girl.”

 

I didn’t answer immediately.  “They tried to teach me,” I said after a bit, “but I didn’t learn well.”

 

“I would imagine you weren’t too interested,” she reasoned.  “It’s not as interesting as fighting.  You don’t get to smack people with needlework.”

 

“Not much smacking, no,” I agreed.  “But also, I just… wasn’t interested.”  

 

Too girly.  

 

Wasn’t going to say it.

 

She looked at her hands as she tidied up the craft supplies, so she might have heard it anyway.  “It’s _useful_ ,” she said defensively.  “People don’t look at seamstresses, or maids.  I wanted to help, I wanted to make a difference, but the things I could do…  what I learned with the Clan… it wouldn’t let me pass un-noticed.  But I knew how to knit, and I learnt how to stitch, so I stopped being what I was before, and became a seamstress instead.”

 

I hesitated, then smiled innocently.  “And a spy?” I asked.

 

She gave a little cry, dismayed, and I ruthlessly replayed all the ways she had given herself away:  

 

“You ‘wanted to help’, you said.  You’ve needed to pass un-noticed.  You used to carry messages, and when you told me that was for money, you were lying.”  She flinched, and impulsively, I reached out across my body and took her hand.  “It’s alright,” I soothed.  “You’re planning to spy for the Inquisition, and I’m for them.  And it’s not  _ evil,  _ I mean it’s not like you’re a blood-mage or anything, right?  You’re just helping out your cause.”  

 

With a face that transparent, she must have been a  _ terrible  _ spy:  she was clearly still panicked, and my reassuring speech had been completely ineffective.   “Really, it’s fine,” I soothed her.  And it's mostly because I'm a smartass that I added, “Some of my best friends are spies!”  

 

No change; she still looked miserable and terrified, which was a joke considering our relative fitness at the moment.

 

I sighed; I suspected I’d be doing that a lot around Daisy.  “Look,” I asked, “who were you spying  _ for?” _

 

“What?”

 

“You had to be working for _someone_.”  

 

Confused, she nodded, then sighed herself and rallied like the champ she was.  “It was the apostates,” she admitted, finally meeting my eyes again.  “The conditions they were living in in those circles, the harsh punishments just for wanting to be  _ free…  _   It’s unthinkable!”  

 

She looked fierce, like she expected me to fight with her, but I wasn’t about to:  I’d heard about Kirkwall, and I’d met the desperate men and women who joined the Inquisition after Redcliffe.  It wasn’t as black and white as she was saying, but at its heart, the Circles were a form of slavery, and that was never going to sit right with me any more than it did with Bull or the Inquisitor or...  The reason Kirkwall exploded the world was that it meant that none of us could ever again be blind to the wrong we’d been perpetrating.      

“You looked at an injustice, and you knew it was wrong, so you wanted to help,” I said, my tone making it clear I agreed with her, even though I only kind of did.  “And when you pitched in, you took the person you were with the Dalish, a notable person who stood out, and you either hid her away or killed her completely in favor of the new you:  a humble, good-hearted seamstress named Daisy.”  Because no way was that the name she was given in her Clan.  

 

Daisy was nodding, anxious at being caught, but not attacking me or running away, either of which would have been a much bigger problem.  

 

“So which was it?” I asked her.  “Did you kill her, or hide her away?”

 

“Hid her,” she said miserably.  “I tied her up in a Templar dungeon near Val Chevin, and I’ve been dragging her around in chains ever since.”

 

“Good girl,” I said approvingly.  “I killed mine.  Or, I guess, I got stronger and she got weaker, and now she’s all wasted away to nothing and I’m… me.”  I frowned, finding a flaw in the analogy.  “No, that’s not right, either.  I had one me hidden inside, and there was another one on top, and that’s the one who I killed.”  I nodded, satisfied with that summation.

 

Daisy looked confused, and I gave up and said baldly, “I’m not really a woman.  I’m just shaped like one; she’s my seamstress.”

 

Daisy’d  been sitting tailor-style at my side again, but at this she untucked her legs, crossed then, and pulled them into her chest, frowning and tugging at her opposite ear.  It didn’t look at all comfortable, but I’d seen Dalish do damn near the same thing when the world was too loud for her to think.  Maybe it was an elf thing.  

 

“So….  You’re not really a woman.”  She looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded.  “You look like a woman, but that’s your false coat, your seamstress.”  

 

“Yes.”

 

Her eyebrows snapped together.  “So what are you then?” she demanded.

 

“What?”  I snorted.  “I’m a man, of course!”

 

“Well, that’s not obvious!” she protested.

 

“If I’m not a woman…” I pointed out.  “It’s one or the other.”

 

“No, it isn’t!”

 

“What else could I be?!”

 

“You could be a golem!” she answered triumphantly, and I stared at her, dumbfounded.  

 

“I could be a…”  I shook my head.  “I’m not sure it’s the same, but sure; I could be a golem.  But I’m not.  I’m a man, and as a man, I have to say I’m very grateful that you helped me bind my breasts away.”

 

“You’re welcome; I’d imagine they were very distracting.”  I closed my eyes, certain I didn’t need to hear the rest of the thought, and sure enough, she continued:  “After all, they’re very lovely breasts!  Not too large, but not sagging at all.  Is that the binder, do you think?  I’d imagine it gives some support, doesn’t it?”

 

I sighed.

  
  
  
  
  


That night, over wild-dog-meat stew heavily flavored with healing herbs and not-at-all-healing, but-maybe-put-hair-on-your-chest spices, I told Daisy how I’d come to join the Imperial army, un-joined again on pain of death, and then join up with the Chargers, instead.  When I was done, Daisy told me one of the Dalish stories that she had learned growing up, while she knitted away on her scarf, and I listened, smiling like a child as she explained how Fen’Harel had tricked Sylaise into binding Dirthamen’s ravens for a year and a day, and the chaos that had resulted while Fear and Deceit were gone.  

 

She was a surprisingly gifted storyteller, maybe because she was so transparent:  her face showed every expression the characters in the well-rehearsed tale would have worn, bringing them to life.  I mentioned it, and right away regretted that, a little; Daisy got quiet and wistful.  

 

“Once,” she said, “my Clan was my…”  She waved a hand, and the end of the scarf landed awfully near my soup bowl.  “...my everything.  I would’ve done anything to preserve our heritage, our culture.  I gave up years of my life to it, spent a decade learning all the stories the Keeper could tell, but in the end…”  She swallowed, shook her head.  “Now, I’m just a girl with a wagon and some pretty hankies.  Even with no Clan, though, no Aravels, no Halla, I still believe myself Dalish.  And I would still make my people proud, though I know that they never will be.”  

 

Well, while I was opening my big, fat mouth...  “Is that what the seamstress thinks?  Or is that the chained-up you?”

 

Surprisingly, Daisy grinned, bright and clear and sharp.  “Oh, that’s the chained-up me.   _ Seamstress  _ me’s clan is dead.”

 

“They’re dead?”  The fate of a false, non-existent clan shouldn’t have bothered me, but something in the way she said it…  

 

“Massacred,” Daisy confirmed.  “By humans.  The humans raged and swore they were casting blood magic, but of course they weren’t.  It was just a rite of Andruil, the huntress, praying for a good hunt.”

 

It wasn’t a lie; it just wasn’t _her_ truth.

 

I didn’t know what to say, so I instinctively opened my good arm for a hug before realizing that without using both arms, the gesture wasn’t so much “have a hug” as “look over there”.  So we stayed where we were, and eventually the silence stretched, elf-like, so impossibly far that it relaxed again.  

 

I fell asleep easily with healing potion glowing warm through my veins, but my dreams were disturbed by owls and ravens, and an old woman with a mocking laugh.


	5. Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my least favorite chapter. I had all these things I needed it to do, and most of them were boring, and it was very difficult to write.

  
  
  
  


The next day, I woke in time for breakfast, and counted it an accomplishment.  Daisy apparently agreed, and decided that we would leave early the next morning.  She went out to hunt breakfast (a fat rabbit, shared between us, with greens raw and dripped with the rabbit-grease, damned tasty), and when she came back, she mentioned seeing wolves.  

 

“I do worry a bit about leaving you alone here,” she said.  “If only there were some weapon you could use with one hand!”   Daisy had a bow which she’d admitted herself “adequate” with, and we both had our knives, but I still didn’t think she was that much safer than I was.  

 

Wasn’t going to say it.

 

“There are lots of ‘em,” I said, and then rambled for a while, listing out all the various options (there are more than you’d think, I knew a guy who could pull a bow once with his feet) as I tried to stab up the salty, greasy greens on my fork.   

 

Then I told her about my maul, how Iron Bull had tossed it to me calling “Happy Birthday”, and I’d felt like a little kid again because it was  _ just what I’d wanted. _  She laughed and washed the bowls and forks, while telling me a fairy story she’d heard about the mabari in one of the Ferelden villages.  (I know Fereldens love their dogs, but I always think the stories where the dogs  _ talk  _ are kind of creepy.) 

 

I napped after that, heavily aided by her suspiciously-large stock of healing potions (bizarre for a seamstress, more sensible for a spy), and woke in mid-afternoon with the sun shining sideways on the curtain of moss and vines, dancing though the leaves to glint off of the large, stone head of a familiar maul, leaning innocently against the wagon.  

  
  
  
  
  


I leaned back against my rock and thought.

 

I thought about a woman who rescued strangers after they were tossed off a bridge by a dragon; a woman who liked being a humble trader because she got to meet “so many nice people”.  I thought about her damned good cooking, her bright smile, her genuine empathy, her desire to be good and to make a difference.  I thought about her being so nice that she’d search through the Wilds for my maul, just because it had been a birthday present, and it meant something to me.

 

And then I thought about how lonely she was, and my heart sank.  

 

The fact of the matter was, Daisy appeared to be damned near a perfect woman; I’d wondered before why she was still single, and I wondered it again now.  There was no way.   Even if she farted like a druffalo and started speaking in limericks around the opposite sex, there was  _ still _ no way.   _ Somebody  _ would brave the smell and the rhymes for that kind of warmth.

 

Which meant Daisy still had some kind of a secret.  

 

It wouldn’t change anything, I reasoned uneasily.   _ Whatever  _ her secret was, I would have to play nice about it, because Daisy was my only ride out of here.  But even taking that off the table, I was prepared to be flexible about whatever she was hiding.  There was just too much good about her for me to really believe she was a danger to me.  

 

Besides, Daisy was the kind of woman who would look at a hooker and hope she was warm enough; how bad could whatever-it-was be?

  
  
  
  
  


Daisy woke up not long after I had (she’d been napping in the wagon), and as a thank-you for the maul, I let her try to teach me finger-knitting, which she suggested on the grounds that it was a craft that actually worked better when one hand was in a cast.  

 

(I could see that, but I was dubious about the value of the loose, stringy ribbon that it produced.  Then Daisy declared I’d got the theory, and swapped out my yarn for a much thicker one, almost the size of a rope, and soft like nug fur.  It was beautiful hunter green, except the color changed as it went along, shading into deep navy blue, and back through pine to a green as pale as sage.  Hand-knit, it turned into a thick, sinfully warm scarf, and I knew exactly who I wanted to give it to.  

 

I thought about how good it would feel to present something I’d made to someone I loved, and grudgingly, I admitted there might be something to this craftsy stuff.)  

 

It was the last night before we headed out, and Daisy and I both agreed that it was a good idea to give me an actual bath tonight.  We wouldn’t be able to do it in the morning, because we wanted to get an early start, and in my condition “early start” and “bath” just didn’t go together.   The process was long and involved, not least because the stream was almost 200 yards down a rocky slope, and maneuvering me down and back was about as much fun as maneuvering one of the Inquisition’s Practice Dummies the same distance.   

 

(I had actually done this, at one point, because Dalish needed it for… something.  I never understood quite what, but when we moved it back, it was covered in char, and Dalish was smug.)

 

Still, we got it done, and when we got back, Daisy switched out my splints and bandages for new ones that weren’t wet.  Then she slipped out again, telling me she was going down to bathe on her own, and she’d be back in “only a few minutes.”

 

I took my potion early that night, partly because I was worried that if we sat around telling stories any more I’d run out, but mostly because the cold water combined with changing the splints had made my bones hurt terribly.  I stayed awake only long enough to see her come back though our curtain, but pain made it seem like almost an hour, and then the darkness of sleep claimed me once more.

  
  
  
  
  


Daisy’s wagon was wonderfully organized.  There were little hooks-and-ties on the three walls, which as I was laying in the wagon’s bed rose up on my right and left and behind my head.  The hooks-and-ties held crates (sides) and sacks (behind my head), and one of the crates Daisy had unceremoniously dumped out on top of me before throwing it onto the floor of the cave and hanging my maul from the hook-and-tie, instead, lashing it in so tightly that I wasn’t even worried about it falling and breaking my face in.  

 

Well, not much, anyway.

 

The roof of the wagon was bright red canvas, and while you would think that we would worry about warmth in Southern Ferelden, I soon discovered that Daisy had a plan for that, and that plan was, “Cover me thoroughly in all the random pieces of fabric and wool and knitting that would normally be on the bottom of the wagon.”  Except, there was still plenty of fabric beneath me.  The point is, broken bones notwithstanding, it was actually pretty comfortable, and I suspected I would be spending a lot of the trip asleep.

 

The last side of the wagon, the back, had double doors on it.  The bed of the wagon itself was sunken, and then there was the lower door (about a foot and a half tall), and then the upper door, which was the same height, but which opened inward and tied to yet another hook on the wall.  The net result was that I could be essentially hidden in the depths of the wagon, but with a decent breeze from the top door being tied open.  So we did just that, and true to my predictions, I napped the first five miles up the old Imperial Highway.

 

The route was to be this:  We would go up the Imperial Highway until we got to the loop it made around the lake at the place that used to be Lothering; then we would head southwest into the Hinterlands, stopping at the Crossroads.  There were Inquisition forces all over the Crossroads, and a number of healers, too, so I should be able to get magical healing there, which would make the rest of the trip a lot less painful.    

 

Pressing hard, we would be able to make it to the Crossroads in four days.  From there, we would head up the road again, around the lake, and across the pass to Skyhold.  That would take us about two weeks, and we weren’t planning to press hard for that part, because it would be suspicious, and also because magically healed bones take a while to really “settle”, and stress fractures are pretty common.  

 

We camped the first night at one of the old royal campgrounds.  Those are all over Ferelden, little alcoves with some source of running water and carefully-far-away latrines, and the Chargers had used them on a few different occasions.  There’s an old Ferelden law about it being sacrosanct to attack anyone at a royal campground, and King Alistair had actually enforced it a couple of times; that, even more than a toilet I could sit on in peace, was what had led me to suggest it.  

 

That night, I spent half an hour spinning my little boot-knife into a tree on the other side of the camp, while Daisy walked back and forth to retrieve it for me.  I kept expecting her to get tired of it, but she said it felt good to be on her feet, and claimed it was helping her think.  

 

“Think about what?” I asked idly, and she said, “Lots of things,” in a way which wasn’t idle at all.

 

Then she asked me to teach her how to throw a knife, and we spent the next hour practicing together, laughing as her throws got wilder and wilder, while the fire glinted off the healing scars on her wrist.  I had noticed, occasionally, that there were more scars on her arms than just the red ones I had noticed that first day; there were older, deeper scars crossing higher and higher up her arms.   I’d even wondered if this was the secret which had kept her alone, a deep, self-hating depression; but while “self-hating” rang true (it’s common to be nervous when you’re sure you can’t do anything right, and Daisy was almost always nervous), depression didn’t, so I decided to keep looking.  

 

“So,” she said as we laid out the blankets, “Tell me about your Someone.”

 

I looked down, instinctively, as the warmth started spreading along my cheeks.  It’d been years since Fenris had joined the Chargers, and I still blushed half the time when I thought about him.  I grinned, pathetically.  “He’s grumpy,” I said.  “He overthinks everything.”

 

Daisy giggled.  

 

“He’s an elf, pale hair, dark skin, all long and lanky.”  My eyebrows dipped in, and my smile went maybe a little smug.  “Really flexible.”  

 

She laughed again, and flopped down into her blankets.  I scooted myself into my own.  “He’s tough, though, like an old chicken which has escaped being dinner for  _ years.   _ He’s stubborn, and opinionated, but underneath all that he’s got this solid core of compassion that he tries to pretend isn’t there.

 

“There’s another elf, a young one, Dalish kid, who really looks up to him.  And when they met, you could see he, my Someone, I mean, wanted nothing but to run right away from that admiring gaze.

 

“But then he decided the kid needed a friend, and that compassionate core won out over the grumpy, so now he’s just grumpy  _ about  _ being kind.  It’s…”  I trailed off, grinning, because the words I was looking for were  _ adorable  _ and  _ hilarious,  _ and I didn’t think he’d appreciate my using either one.

 

“He sounds lovely,” Daisy said wistfully.  

 

“Yeah,” I said softly.  

 

Daisy shifted in her blankets.  “Krem,” she asked, “Would you be with me?”

 

I sat up too quickly, and my ribs hurt like  _ bitch _ , but I didn’t care because there was  _ no way  _ I’d heard that right.

 

Daisy caught my incredulous stare.  Maker, she’d have had to be blind to miss it.  “Not ‘will you’,” she clarified hastily.  “I know, you have a Someone.  I meant… if you  _ didn’t  _ have a Someone.  Would you?”

 

There were times when Daisy seemed tougher than nails, and there were times she seemed delicate as her namesake, and I had the bad feeling this was one of the latter.  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.  “I…  well, for one thing, I’ve never been that interested in women.  There was one, but…”  

 

Daisy nodded.  

 

“And for another…  It took years for me to be able to trust.  Not in a ‘will this person murder puppies’ way, you’re good on that, but more…”  I gestured at my chest, and downward.  “I’ve literally almost died because of this.”

 

Daisy nodded again, but didn’t say anything.

 

I let the silence grow for a minute, but then asked, “Daisy?” 

 

She shook herself, smiled unconvincingly.  “Right,” she said.  “I’m fine.  I just…”  She shrugged.  “I’ve been in love a few times, did you know that?”  I must have looked as alarmed as I felt, because she hurried on, “Not  _ you,  _ other people, but I could tell I  _ could  _ be in love with you, if I let myself, and I just…”  Another shrug.  And a sigh.  “There have been a lot of people who said they  _ could  _ be in love with me, but no one who said they  _ were, _ and I think I’ve stopped believing them.”  

 

I wanted to tell her we’d find her someone, but I didn’t; for one thing, she’d probably heard it before.  I also wanted to tell her that she still had plenty of time, but I could tell she wasn’t nearly as young as she usually looked and there was a war on, so maybe that wasn’t true, either.  And I couldn’t tell her there was someone out there for her, because I didn’t actually believe in soulmates.

 

And I still didn’t know her last secret.  

 

_ Fuck it _ , I thought.  “Want a hug?”  

 

She sniffled, and came around the fire to get one.

  
  
  
  


I woke up at midnight feeling lonely, missing the stringy warmth of my lover at my side and the less-tangible warmth of my Chargers around me.  We, the Chargers that is, had made a little family, and now, in the face of Daisy’s isolation, I felt homesick.  

 

Across the fire from me, Daisy tossed again in her blankets, and I lifted my head.  “Here,” I said muzzily, lifting the blanket, and without saying anything, Daisy came around and settled on my good side.  It wasn’t the same, but it felt good to pretend; it would do.

  
  
  



	6. Interlude:  Fenris

 

  
  
  


It wasn’t enough to stretch this morning; Fenris grabbed a rucksack, some jerky, and a sword, and went for a run.  

It was different, running in the mountains; the elevation made him slow, even after months of living and training in Skyhold.  And at any rate, he had been out in the lowlands for many of his missions, so it wasn’t surprising that he was feeling the altitude.  He tilted his head down, and kept moving.  

He wanted a hard run, today.  It made the ache in his chest fit into a less-awful context.  

He went out for two hours, running at a steady, ground-covering lope, not thinking, not tracking time.  His breath eased in and out, and his feet hit the ground in a corresponding rhythm:  in (left, right, left), out (right, left, right).  Mid-morning, the road hit a stream too small to bridge, and he stopped as the icy water made his calves cramp.  

Once the calves went, it was only a matter of time before the rest of him would, too, so he drank deeply and turned, munching a piece of the jerky and walking back towards Skyhold, which looked beautiful in the direct sunlight.  

When he arrived, Fenris went straight to his room, discarding the rucksack and sword before crawling back into bed, sleeping the rest of the day on a pillow that still smelled like Krem.   
  
  
  


The next morning, Dalish and Skinner came and retrieved him for stretching, walking him up to the battlements where they stretched in sideways blush of the dawn sunlight.  It seemed closer from up here.  

As they were finishing, Fenris heard a stone that sounded deliberately kicked echo against the stone balustrade, and he turned to see Hawke leaning against the wall.  She walked around the battlements with him, not speaking unless spoken to, but also not leaving his side.  

(Once, he looked down, and was surprised to see Anders talking easily with the surgeon.  He stopped, and he and Hawke watched together as the two entered the infirmary, conversation never breaking off.)  

When Hawke departed, shortly after noon in the gardens, Fenris was unsurprised see Varric approaching from his right. 

He knew what they were doing; once, he would have objected.  Now…  

_ It wraps around me like a warm blanket.   _ He snorted.   _ With Krem gone, I’ll need all the warmth I can get. _

 

 

After supper, Varric was still hovering by his side when Seeker Pentaghast, whom Fenris had met, but did not know well, came up to them.  

Varric was suddenly slightly  _ behind _ him, and Fenris remembered that there was no love lost between the Seeker and the dwarf.  As it happened, though, Varric was not the target of the Seeker’s attention.  

“I have been asked,” she said, accent suspiciously thicker than usual, “to offer a display of martial prowess to the troops.”  

She quirked a wing-like eyebrow at him, and he smiled thinly.  “Asked by whom?”  There were a number of candidates.

The eyebrow edged into something like approval.  “Commander Cullen made the request.”

Fenris hmm’ed.  “Apology?” he asked.  “Or bribe?”

“I had thought concern,” she said, voice carefully neutral, and he nodded, turning abruptly to Varric.

“When we’re done,” he said, “you and Sera should spar.  I imagine that by then there will be a crowd.”  

Varric looked startled, but agreed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No way in hell was I going to write the scene where Fenris Got Told. This is more... Fenris has been told, and is grieving, but will be okay.


	7. Crossroads

The next morning, as the sun rose in a blaze of tangerine and peach, Daisy took one of the larger sacks from the back wall of the wagon (the one I had been using as a pillow, actually) and started pulling out skein after skein of the same thick, ropey yarn I’d used for before, jeweled tones and subtle shades spilling through her hands like rubies and smoke.  “I have a baker’s dozen these, they were a gift, and I will never use them on my own,” she said.  “I knit and sew in the wagon, and I always feel silly working with such a large yarn.  Please make things with these.”  They were the softest things I’d ever touched in my life, and my hands, which itched for the feel of slender, tan fingers, twitched towards the skeins before I’d decided.   

Thinking of the Iron Bull, I started another scarf in shades of ochre, wine, and gold. 

  
  
  


We ran into Templars just after noon on the third day out.  I never saw them, hidden uselessly in the back of the wagon, hands tangled in the celery-and-sunshine I was working up for Dalish, but they greeted Daisy with, “Halt, by order of the Templar Order!”, so it wasn’t hard  to figure out who it probably was.  

Daisy called back easily, although a strain of tightness ran under her words:  “All right, let me pull to the side of the road, then.”  She was playing up her Dalish accent, and her voice was higher than usual.  The full Seamstress.

I took the jostle of the wagon to throw some blankets over me and scrunch down as much as my splints would let me.  

“Alright, then, what can I do for you gentlemen?” Daisy asked, then said, “Oh!  I’m sorry, gentlemen and lady.”  I could almost see her sunny smile.  

The Templars must have missed it, though:  “We are taking all mages into custody,” a male voice blustered.  “Get down off the wagon.”

“But why?  I’m not a mage!”  

Shit.  Her voice was innocent, but it was also scared under the innocence.  

“Are you not?” demanded a strong, Orlesian woman’s voice.  “A single Dalish woman?  Riding alone?  With a wagon presumably full of valuables?  If you’re not a mage, how have you travelled safely in these times?”

“Wouldn’t being a mage make me  _ less  _ safe, if you’re taking them all into custody?” Daisy countered.  “And anyway, my load  _ isn’t _ valuable.  Look, it’s fabric and things.”  She kept a muff she was embroidering in the driver’s seat with her, I knew; she was probably gesturing with it.  

There was a minute of silence, presumably while the Templars looked at the needlework and realized no mage would waste her time stitching daffodils onto a pink hand-warmer.  

“I also.”  Daisy’s voice was hesitant, and I thought,  _ Shit.   _ “I have a friend in the back; he usually guards my back, but he was hurt in a fall…”  I threw the blankets away from my face, but faked sleep like a champ as heavy footsteps walked around the wagon.  “...I’ve given him some strong sleeping potions because the wagon isn’t exactly comfortable, but he can’t walk…”

The male voice spoke from way too close, and I carefully controlled my startle:  “Very well.”

And the footsteps receded.  

The woman again:  “You will accompany us to our camp, two miles from here, and a mage who is loyal to our cause will test you for magic.  If you are, as you say, no mage, we will… release you.”

Lie.  They wouldn’t release her even  _ if  _ their “loyal mage” wasn’t Venatori, which he almost certainly was.  

Fuck.

Daisy’s next words came out crossly, and my heart stopped for a moment.  “Don’t be silly, can’t Templars drain magic?  I mean, out of people?”  

The Templars seemed as surprised as I was.  “We can.”  Tenor male, the third one.  

“So drain me, then.  When it doesn’t work, which it won’t, because I don’t  _ have  _ any magic, you can just let us go, and we can make our campsite before dark, still.”

A pause.  The tenor male said kindly, “Most mages find that process… uncomfortable.  To say the least.  Are you sure you don’t want to come to camp?  The mage will just look at you.”  Free Marcher accent; maybe he was from Kirkwall?  

“It’s two bumpy miles, each way, and my friend is going to wake up in an hour.  Just do it!”

“Very well,” snarled the woman, and everything went quiet again.

A minute later, Daisy asked uncertainly, “Did you do it?” and the woman sounded gobsmacked as she said, “But… I was so certain…  I felt the magic bearing down on us with this cart!”  

“Maybe it was another cart,” said the first man, voice carrying a heavy undertone of _And maybe you're just full of shit_ , “There were two more on the road.”

“Let’s go,” the second man said tersely.

Two minutes after that, we were back on our way, and I finally let myself shake.  

  
  
  


“Do you think they made it?” I wondered that night, then realized Daisy probably had no idea what I meant.   “Anise, Gertrude, and Charles, I mean.  The people I was with when the dragon found us.”

“Yes, I do,” she answered, finishing off my old scarves for me by weaving in the ends.  

“I mean, the dragon had all day to find a way into that little cover they found.”

“They took the horses,” she offered.  

“What?”  

“The horses.  There were seven of them tied up outside the gates of the Ostagar Camp early that morning--”  And that was true, we’d taken our time canvassing the camp, because we’d been concerned about Darkspawn stragglers.  It’d just gone noon when we hit the bridge.  “And that night I realized they must be with you and went to retrieve them, but they were already gone.”

“...Oh,” I said, adding, “That was good thinking.”  

“Theirs, or mine?” Daisy asked, eyebrows raised.

“Both, I guess.”  If they’d made it out of Ostagar, they had probably sent a message to the Inquisition already.  

The Chargers would think I was dead.  

On the other hand, Anise, Gertrude, and even Charles making it home was  damned good news.  “We’re how many days out from the crossroads, at this pace?”

“We should reach them tonight.  It’s a hard press to get from there to Redcliffe in a day, but I think we can make that, too.”

I nodded.  “Good, then.”  

Restlessly, I reached into the yarn bag and started a fourth scarf (brown and tan and ivory, for Skinner), and Daisy scooted forward to tangle her feet with mine.

  
  
  


Daisy’s plan went well, at least; we did in fact reach the Crossroads just before the sun set the next day, and I showed the badges I’d carried in my belt-pouch, the ones that only Inquisition officers knew belonged to Inquisition officers.  That got me a proper mage-Healer in short order, although they kept me overnight and gave me dubious looks.  I persuaded them to offer Daisy a room, too, which she took once I pointed out that it would be warmer, and in the Inquisition barracks, her wagon would be safe.  

My own plan went less well:  I had thought they would let me use their ravens to send a message to Skyhold, something along the lines of, “Not dead, coming home, bringing stray kitten,” but the stuffed-shirt idiot Josephine had left  in charge of the garrison took an instant dislike to me for unknown reasons.  

(Unknown, but suspected; I’d be willing to bet it had something to do with shirts, and what stuffed them.)  

He looked me up and down, sneered, informed me that he had only my word for my association with the Inquisition, that I could have gotten the badges anywhere (he didn’t quite say I’d probably gotten them off a corpse), and that while he had to grant me admission and healing tonight, I was to take myself and my Dalish whore (definitely his words) out of the barracks first thing in the morning.

“What was your name, again?” I asked him.

“Simon Plantagen, Bann of West Hill,” he sniffed.

“Right.  I’ll remember that,” I said, then left without asking permission.     
  
  
  


Healing always hurt; magical healing hurts just as much as regular healing, it just hurts all at once.  Daisy crept into my room and slept beside me that night, fingers tangling in mine, but it didn’t help much; I still tossed and turned, aching.  Finally, when the sky outside my slit window began to lighten, I swung my legs out of bed and stood up.  

I almost passed out.  It had been a week since I was on my own two feet without Daisy acting as a crutch, and my muscles twinged and protested.  I shook my head, then purposefully took one small step away from the bed, swung my arms over my head, and stretched.  

My sigh as I let my arms fall back to my sides must have been pretty loud; Daisy woke up and staggered upright.  “Oh, goodness, I must have slept on you,” she said, voice hushed for the early hour.  “I hope I didn’t hurt you!”

“You’re a feather,” I assured her.  “Don’t worry.”  I brought my left arm in front of me, pulling the tendons tight with a gasp.

“Are we stretching?” she asked.  “Maybe we should take this outside.”

Homesickness hit me like a guardsman’s billy-club:  not as bad as it could be, but pretty fucking bad.   _ Two weeks,  _ I promised myself, blinking,  _ two weeks and I’ll be back in Skyhold, with the Chargers, and I can watch my lover creep out in the morning to meet Dalish and Skinner for their Elfy Stretching Sessions.   _

_ Two weeks.   _ I took a deep and shaky breath.

“Yeah,” I said, “Let’s take this outside.”

  
  
  


We didn’t actually leave at first light, mostly because once I was done stretching, I  _ really  _ needed to hit something, and Daisy waited graciously while I spent an hour working up a sweat against the practice dummies, while the crowd of soldiers around me grew.  Although they didn’t seem to be practicing themselves, too much; hopefully I wasn’t breaking some etiquette about who uses the pells first.  

Then the Healer, a tall human woman named Ellendra, came out and scolded me for getting up before she’d looked me over, and dragged me back inside for further evaluation, clicking her tongue.  

Finally, I went to find Daisy and get on the road, only to see her already sitting in the back of the cart, surrounded by young men in suspiciously open-collared states of dress, all talking seriously and trying to look deep into her eyes.  She gave me a pleading look as I walked up, and I shooed them gently away. 

“Will you drive?” she asked hopefully, yawning a pathetically fake yawn.  “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” she added, eyes wide and earnest.  

“Right,” I said, and climbed into the driver’s seat.  Small way to pay her back for her help.

All told, it was nearly two hours after sunrise before we rolled out of the Inquisition fortifications, but we made good time, in part because I was willing to keep driving through a cold lunch I’d picked up that morning.  We rolled into Redcliffe just as the sun touched the horizon, and staggered up to the inn where, by mutual agreement, we spent some of the coin I’d had on me to get a room we could share.  

Daisy locked up the wagon, while I carried our bags, including my maul, into the room, but as soon as we’d put everything down and had a piss, we looked at each other and, without talking about it, walked out into the common room, where we picked up a couple ales and sat at a table near the fire.  Daisy’d brought the bag of yarn, and she pulled out a handkerchief, which was getting a lovely (and almost invisible) Andraste’s Grace in the corner.  For the first time, I was the one who sewed up the edges of one of the scarves I’d made (blue, orange, and buff, for Rocky; I was getting faster, I hadn’t started it until after noon).

Neither of us noticed who was entering the taproom.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun with this one. Possibly too much fun, but I regret nothing.


	8. Red Lace Dress

 

 

 

“So what did you work on today?” I asked, poking the yarn angrily at the needle Daisy had assured me would accommodate it.  So far, she was wrong; the yarn caught the edge of the eye and swerved away again, and all I could think about was dick jokes.  

“It works better if you twist the yarn up,” she said, which in the context of dick jokes was actually horrifying.

“It’s already twisted,” I grumbled

“Twist it tighter.”  She pulled her needle through the handkerchief again, then patted the newly-made stitch.  “I was reading most of the day, actually.”

“The books you picked up in the Wilds?” I asked, and she met my eyes, startled.  “Yes, I noticed.  Didn’t see much point in saying anything.  Were they Flemeth’s?”

Daisy nodded hesitantly.  “Some of them, anyway.  There was one on Elvhen history which I suspect she took from someone else.”

“Heavy stuff?”

“Mostly,” she agreed.  “They’re not as interesting as I had hoped they would be,” and she looked genuinely disappointed. 

“Hah!” I crowed, as the tightly-wound yarn passed through the needle, and I pulled it through quickly before I could drop it.  I was just starting to poke the needle through the first stitch of the scarf when a heavy hand dropped down on my shoulder, squeezing tightly.  

“You know, for a dead man, you look pretty good,” said a voice I had followed through fire, rain, mud and magic, and I jumped like a startled cat to see the Iron Bull standing behind me.  

“Chief!” I yelped, tossing the scarf to the side where it fluttered to the floor, and there he was, larger than life except it was the  _ Chief,  _ and large  _ is  _ his life.  The Inquisitor was standing behind him, and Pavus and that Cole kid were behind  _ him; _ probably they’d been on a mission in the Hinterlands, or were headed to one.  

“Mind if we join you?” asked the Inquisitor, and I wasn’t crazy enough to say yes even if I had meant it, which I wouldn’t have.

I pulled a nearby table over towards us, instead, bumping it into ours to make a bigger surface, and everyone wound up sitting again around the two with ale in short order.  I made introductions, making sure I identified the Inquisitor by name, not title, but it turned out it didn’t make much difference, because as soon as I finished talking, Daisy asked brightly, “Can I see your hand?” and Lavellan smiled wryly, and stripped off his gloves.  Daisy bent so close, staring deeply into the welling green light, that I thought he could probably palm her nose, and then leaned back and made a little curtsy.

He laughed, and turned to me.  “We got a message from Anise,” he started, and I nodded.  “What happened?”

“Dragon,” I said.  “Not as big as the one you killed.”

“We killed two,” the Bull rumbled, and I blinked.  

“Not as big as the one I heard about, then.  And when did you get the second one, last week?"  The Chief grinned, and I realized that that was exactly when they got the second one.  I shook my head.  "Anyway…”  I described how the dragon had surprised us, listed our losses, commended Anise because she deserved it, and then described waking up in a cave with Daisy.  They turned to her, then, and I almost felt bad, because any one of these people could be disconcerting when they focused completely on you, and here she was getting all of them at once.  

She took it well, though, answering the Chief’s and the Inquisitor’s questions about my injuries, my recovery, how long we’d stayed put, and what we’d done once we started traveling.  When she was done, Lavellan leaned back in his chair and took a thoughtful sip of ale.  

“Where are you headed?” he asked her, and she said “Skyhold?” as if it were obvious, which I kind of thought it was.

“You okay with that?” asked Bull, and she tilted her head.  

“It was my idea in the first place,” she told him.  

“Why?” asked Lavellan, and I was disconcerted to realize that that they were interrogating her as a team; somewhere along the line, Bull and Lavellan had gotten closer than Bull and I ever had.  It made sense, and it definitely shouldn’t have hurt, but it did anyway, a little.

“The Inquisition does good work,” Daisy answered them in her lilting voice.  “Look around you.”  She gestured with a slim finger.  “I would bet there are at least three people in this room alone who owe their sustenance or family or health to the Inquisition.  Some of them may even owe it directly to you.”  

I saw the Chief’s eyes dart around the room, and his gaze met Lavellan’s with a lifted eyebrow.  

Huh; maybe  _ more  _ than three people.

“Who  _ wouldn’t  _ want to help that?” Daisy asked.

“An astonishing number of people,” Pavus muttered.

“Well, they’re idiots,” she said bluntly, and the Bull laughed and tipped his horns at her.  

Lavellan leaned forward in his chair again, taking a drink.  “In that case, Daisy, welcome to the Inquisition,” he said, and she gave that smile of hers again.  This time, though, he matched it, and if Daisy’s smile was like the sun, his was like a fire at the hearth, all warmth and comfort.  I watched, amused, as her cheeks turned pink, and she ducked her head.  

Then the Bull turned to me, lazily, and my guard went  _ right  _ up.  “So,” he said.  “You took up crochet?”

I rolled my eyes.  “Chief,” I said mock-seriously, “What would  _ you  _ do with only one hand and one leg?”

The Bull gave me an eyebrow.  

_ “Other _ than that.”

An eyebrow,  _ and  _ a pointed, filthy grin.  “I’m just sayin’, if it were me, it wouldn’t be crochet.”

Daisy groused, “It’s  _ knitting _ , actually.”  

“Not helping,” I bit off.  “Look, I was  _ bored,  _ alright?”  No, wrong tactic.  I narrowed my eyes at him, reaching into the knitting bag.  “Do you want this thing or not?”

Bull rocked back.  Not a  _ lot _ , but it was there.  “What thing?”

I chucked the ochre scarf at his face, and it was almost hilariously effective:  His head tipped back a little bit, and his eyebrows did the temporarily-not-scary thing they did when he was actually very touched.  “Is this for me?” he asked.

“No, I only threw it at you because I’m an idiot.”  There were a lot of captains who would have fired me for my mouth a long time ago; thank the Maker, Bull wasn’t one of them.

He was holding the scarf in one hand, ropey lengths draping away, and slowly, his other hand came up and rested lightly on top of it.  “It’s soft,” he said, surprised.  He looked from me, to it, and back to me.  “Thanks, Krem.”  

Lavellan leaned forward.  “May I?” he asked, and Bull held out the scarf, but didn’t actually pass it over.  Lavellan patted it, and his eyes widened.  “Wow,” he said, “It... is  _ very  _ soft.”  His eyes lit up with about three different kinds of happiness.  “You should put it on,” he said, and quicker than a fox, had wrapped on of the trailing loops around the Chief’s neck, where it clashed  _ awfully  _ with the war paint.  “It looks good,” he claimed earnestly.  

Pavus swung to his feet.  “I suddenly need either a larger or a stronger drink; who else?” A quick count, and he held up four fingers as he walked towards the bartender.  

The pale boy, Cole, spoke suddenly.  “I like your dress,” he told Daisy.

Daisy looked down at herself, and blinked.  “I’m wearing trousers,” she said dubiously.  

Cole shook his head.  “Not that one,” he explained, “the other one.”  

She raised one eyebrow, not superciliously, but bewildered.  “The other one?”

He nodded as Pavus began setting drinks down in front of us.  “The red dress.  It’s crimson lace and silver ribbons, slipping on like an old coat now, holding you in, hiding you away.  You made it yourself, the first one you ever made a pattern for.”  He smiled, adding kindly, “It’s very pretty.”

Daisy’s mouth had dropped open.  “Thank you,” she said, her voice strange.

The magister rolled his eyes.  “‘Red lace and ribbons, holding you in’?” he repeated.  “That’s not a dress, Cole, that’s a corset.”

“What’s a corset?” Cole asked.

There was a brief, horrified silence, during which we all agreed to  _ never answer that question _ .  

“So, Krem,” said the Bull, “you can’t have  _ only  _ crocheted for the last week.  What else did you do?”

“Told stories, mostly,” Daisy answered.  “We seem to both love them.”

Nirem looked like it was the Midwinter Festivus, except I’m pretty sure that’s only an Imperial tradition; Cole tilted his head, and the Chief slouched in his chair a bit.  “By all means,” drawled Pavus.  “Distract us with a story.”

So we did.  

I went first, with a story only the Bull had heard before from my first days in training in the Imperial army.  

(I wondered as I told it if that time was significant, and how it might have shaped the Chargers.  After all, I was the first of the Bull’s inner circle, and the Imperial army was well-used to working with mages.  Dalish had been the second of the Bull’s recruits, and suddenly that seemed important.  I should probably mention that to the Commander when we finally got back and I gave a debrief.)  

Then the Bull went next, telling a series of stories about old jobs, each less accurate than the last.  I should know; I’d been there for all three.  

(On the other hand, I could hardly begrudge him the one about me and the herd of cows outside Jader, because it was well-known, and it was always popular, and unfortunately, it was mostly true.)

Lavellan told us about a knot of not-very-bright bandits that had attempted to waylay him on his way from his Clan to the Conclave.  

(He’d convinced them that he hadn’t any money because he was a wandering minstrel, and they had convinced him to come back and sing for them that night in exchange for free passage through their territory.  The problem with this was that they didn’t actually  _ control  _ their territory, and a troup of Fereldan guards had tried to roust them all just before sunset; Lavellan had had to hide up a tree for the next twelve hours to escape.)  

(Also, I’ve heard Lavellan’s singing voice, _and_ I’ve seen him try to lie.  This story was actually _less_ probable than the one about Rocky and old silverite mine, and I knew that one wasn’t true.)

Pavus told us about how he’d met his friend Felix, and I almost felt bad for him.  Felix sounded like somebody I would like, in the story, at least, and definitely like somebody the magister missed terribly.

(Lavellan’s leg pressed up against Pavus’ by the end of the story.  I tried not to notice; I definitely tried not to be envious.  Fourteen days ‘til home.)

Daisy told us about the time that the god June met a nug, and was so charmed by the creature that he built it a great collar, a house, a bed, a statue, and finally a saddle.  

(By the time Sylaise had charmed the nug with a simple crown of flowers, we were all in stitches, and also more than halfway drunk.)

(Lavellan, by the way, got Dalish when he was drunk, which solved that mystery.  I’d been wondering about his Marcher accent for  _ months _ , but it made sense that he would avoid the Dalish accent in a world that would hold it against him.)  

(I remembered uneasily that the Inquisitor was, for all his genial charm, very, very bright.)

When Daisy finished, we all looked at Cole, who blinked back at us, uneasily.  The silence stretched in the funhouse way that silences at parties can do, and then he said quietly, “I… don’t think I have a story… not one that's mine to tell…”

Daisy set down her mug.  “Poor shweety,” she said, and gave him a hug, rocking gently from side to side until she overbalanced, and rocked right over.

At that point, we unanimously agreed the night was over, and wandered off to our respective rooms, me carrying Daisy over one shoulder, and the abandoned crafting bag over the other.

  
  



	9. Interlude:  Dorian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next are not Gen. They're, like, one-up from Gen, this one for sexual content, the next for violence.
> 
> Chapter 7 (next chapter) was EVIL. I am still convinced it sucks, but at least I have it drafted, and I can review and post it some time this week. Chapter 8 is making up for it by flowing along nicely, so this whole thing should be done by next Monday. (Probably sooner.)

  
  
  
  
  


Dorian was definitely tipsy, and it was admittedly likely that their companions on the other side of the wall could hear them, but Nirem was sitting on the edge of the bed and he  _ was not wearing a shirt,  _ and Dorian definitely needed to bury his face in the crook of that neck and suck the moans out of him until they both went mad.  He reached for Nirem, and Nirem was already reaching back, wrapping his arms around him and digging his fingers into Dorian’s ass (which wasn’t a surprise at all, given the superior quality of the ass in question.)

Fifteen minutes later, they were sprawled on the bed, panting, and Nirem rolled off of him sideways until he was lying with his legs pointing up the wall like the hands of a clock.  He swung his arms over his head and  _ stretched. _

Dorian… made a noise.  “If _you_ do _that_ again _,_ _we_ will do _this_ again.”

Nirem laughed, loose and easy with drink.  “You shouldn’t promise what you can’t deliver,” he said.  He came out of the stretch, hand falling onto Dorian’s face and patting it.  He sighed, happily.  “Today was good.”

Dorian smiled, smug at the sound of Elvhen in Nirem’s voice.  He didn’t get to hear it often; he had  _ never  _ heard it outside of Skyhold.  “It was, rather, wasn’t it?” he asked, voice still a little rough with exertion.

“I like Krem,” Nirem declared, and Dorian snorted.  “He’s a good guy.  And I like his friend Daisy.”

“That is not her real name,” Dorian observed.  

“No, and mine’s not Fidget.”  Nirem hummed as Dorian’s hand found the dark line of hair that began below his belly-button, petting.  “If _ I _ had her name, I wouldn’t use it, either.”  

Dorian blinked.  “You know her real name?”

“I’m pretty sure,” said Nirem, surprised.  “She’s a rather famous mage.  You haven’t guessed?”

Dorian shook his head.  “No, and neither have you,” he said, disappointed.  “She’s not a mage.”

“Yes, she is,” argued Nirem.  

“No, she’s not.  You can see it,” he explained.  “You--well, not you, but a mage can, I can--look at a mage, and their power shines out around them.  It’s rather like the rays around the sun.”  

“And there’s no way to hide it?” 

“Tranquility.”

_ “Hide  _ it, not kill it.  And anyway, she’s definitely not tranquil.”

“None that I’ve ever heard of.  And I would think I would have, wouldn’t you?”

“No, actually, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing Tevinter would do their best to bury away forever.”

“Well, that’s a disquieting thought.”

Nirem’s gaze was focused (Thoughtfully?  Sadly?  Possibly just drunkenly?) on a spot on the ceiling.  “She has to be a mage,” he said.

“Why?” asked Dorian.  “She appears to be a perfectly lovely, perfectly normal young lady.”

“She knew about June and the nug, though, and she told it  _ just right.” _

Dorian noticed that Nirem was petting his hair, smoothing it first one way then rucking it up and soothing it the other way.  He tried not to smile sappily.  “You can know a story without being a mage,” he pointed out.  

“Not that one; they don’t tell it outside of the clan, and not often even within.  And not that perfectly,” Nirem insisted.  “Only the Keepers know all the stories by word, especially the obscure ones.  And all Keepers are mages, at least a little bit.”

Dorian shrugged.  “Maybe she just has a good memory,” he said.  

“I s’pose.”  He looked… oddly disappointed.  “I was really hoping, though.”

Dorian leaned forward and kissed him extravagantly.  “What can I do,” he murmured, “to distract you from your disappointment?”

Nirem flushed, and smiled, looking up from under his lashes, then flopped his legs down the wall.  And if he wasn’t actually distracted--Nirem hid his canniness under a veneer of ingenuousness which was paradoxically genuine--well…  neither of them noticed.


	10. Templars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suck at update schedules; mea culpa.  
> Speaking of mea culpa, though, I had a little too much fun finding the "Tevene" words for male and female mages. Kinda missing my Latin, over here. 
> 
> Debating whether I should finish this up with one more chapter, as planned, or go for two. I'm trying to juggle chapter size, and also I'm doing that thing where I try to put a bunch of stuff in and some of it is too much. On the other hand, the natural stopping point I'd had planned doesn't work with some of the stuff I want in... *frowns* Anyway. There's this, anyway.

 

 

I sparred with the Chief in the morning, my maul making wide sweeps that were designed to build up my muscles.  He took it easy on me, making allowance for my previous injuries, but even so, he was noticeably faster against me, and maybe I really was that much slower than normal, but it seemed more likely that he was faster than ever, speed improved from travelling with the Inquisitor.  

Some time during our spar, Daisy came out and practiced throwing her little hunting knife, and the next time I looked up, Cole had his hand around her wrist and was making throwing motions.  Lavellan had staggered out to stand, eyes closed, in the sun, completely hung over.

We took it easy that day, and I explained to the Inquisitor as he rode beside Daisy’s cart that we had _planned_ not to rush toward Skyhold, that we’d deliberately be taking it easy.  Lavellan looked surprised, but agreed to send a message at the next stop to tell Skyhold he would be slow coming back.  

So we didn’t get far that day, barely curving around the south end of Lake Calenhad, stopping at an inn half an hour before sunset because it was clean (said the Inquisitor) and had good beer (said the Chief), and because the next inn was another hour and a half down the road, which was an hour too much (said Pavus).  

As soon as we’d paid for our rooms, the Chief jerked his head at me, and we were back in the yard, and everything was slower tonight, the workout this morning still lingering in my muscles, but there’s a certain satisfaction in training as hard as you can, when your muscles ache and you _know_ they’re going to hurt worse tomorrow, but you also _know_ you can push yourself through, and you’ll be better for it.  When we were done, not only was the sun down, but the sky was edging well-and-truly towards dark, and I sluiced off in the horse trough before inhaling dinner and going straight to bed.  

  
  


Daisy flopped on top of me, on my right because that had always been my good side.  She smelled lightly of cider, but she was definitely not drunk.  “That’s a very interesting young man,” she observed.  

“Which one?”

“Cole,” she answered, and I snorted.

“I think he’s the one who’s actually a spirit in human form,” I said, not-quite-warningly, and I felt her shrug.

“He seems like a very sweet young man,” she repeated.  I didn’t argue, because it was objectively true, but I also didn’t trust him.  

She snuggled into me a little bit, then frowned.  

“You smell, didn’t you wash?”

“I’ll wash in the morning, when the sun can dry me,” I said, and curled my arm around her.

  
  


It had been almost a week, and I was almost back to normal, when we were attacked by Templar forces in the foothills of the Frostbacks.  There were about two fewer than too many of them; eleven, plus a couple of Venatori mages.  

The good news:  there were five of us fighting, and Daisy was tucked safely in the back of the wagon.  They got the drop on us via ambush and we couldn’t set up a line, but we _could_ make a little defensive circle, with Pavus, the horses, and the wagon in the center, and the Chief, the Inquisitor and I on the outside.  Pavus had barriers on us and mines on the ground faster than I would’ve believed possible, and I made a note to send Dalish to drill with him some time.

The better news:  They weren’t surrounding us.  There was a cliff wall on our left, and while they were in front of and behind us, they weren’t on both sides.  If they had been up on that cliff chucking rocks down, we’d have been in… well, more trouble, anyway.

The really bad news:  they weren’t bandits.  These were Templars, used to fighting mages and other trained fighters, and Venatori, used to wreaking great swathes of havoc.  One of the mages summoned demons to run across the mines, and the mines discharged, leaving the Templars unharmed.  Dorian swore, softly, behind me, but I didn’t look.  He didn’t re-set the mines, though.  

The Templar commander was going to be a problem.  I knew, because he didn’t shout his orders; his voice was pitched to be heard by his men and not by us, and that was a little too smart to be a good sign.  He was almost done speaking when a slim young man appeared out of _nowhere_ and slit the throat of the _maga Venatoris._  He was gone again, just as quickly, and the Templars rushed forward, two for me, _five_ for the Bull, three for the Inquisitor.

They were underestimating me, and that was _just fine_.  I grinned, and hefted my maul.  

The first went easily; they never expect a maul can move as quickly as I can make it move, and the first opponent _always_ falls in the first round, because they can never block fast enough.  The second took more time; he dodged the first blow, and the second, third, and fourth, but then he tried to bring his blade to bear, to cut me down, and I blocked with the haft before shifting my grip and swinging the heavy stone handle of the maul neatly into his temple.  

He went down, not dead, and I had swung around to aid the Chief when a shriek pierced through the clash.  Everybody pulled back, the Templars and us; even the _magus Venatoris_ who had summoned the demons paused.  

The eleventh Templar was dragging Daisy out of the wagon, a knife at her throat.  

“Fuck,” muttered Pavus, behind me.  

“We could do this messy,” the Templar warned, voice arrogant and smug; I felt a sudden strong desire to be hitting him.  “Our orders are to bring the _Inquisitor_ in alive, the rest of you can be dead in the dust.”

Daisy went dead-weight to the point of falling, and he wrestled her into a standing position again, his dagger’s position never wavering, and her hands came up to hover near her shoulders.  “None of that,” he said to her, barely audible, and I _really needed to be hitting him right now_ .  He addressed the rest of us again:  “You can all die, _or_ you can stand down!  We’ll take the Inquisitor, and the girl here, and you start walking; when you’re two miles away, we’ll let the girl go.”

“Are you fucking joking?” started Pavus, and the Chief cut him off, calling “Conference!”  

We started to pull in a little, which apparently everyone but Pavus knew was a stall-and-regroup maneuver only, but Daisy called, “Don’t do it!” and wrapped her hands around the blade, yanking it hard away from her throat.  I’ve seen that move done before (it’s actually standard self-defense, because at that angle the leverage is all in the defender’s favor), but firstly, I wouldn’t have thought Daisy knew that particular move, and secondly, you can grip the knife as firmly and carefully as you want (and in this situation, go firm, not careful), you’re still going to cut your hands, _deep._  

And Daisy was a seamstress, whose livelihood depended _on her hands._ I wanted to puke.

Still, it got her away from the bargaining Templar, and she spun around, putting her back into our defensive line like she’d done it a thousand times before.  She held her hands out, away from her side and palms up, and I saw the crimson lines of deep lacerations start to surface on them.  

“Little BITCH!” roared her erstwhile captor, and he and the other Templars pulled back as a group, retreating and regrouping the same way we had a second ago.  

(That comes with drilling your maneuvers, and training your blades, together.  One of the bad things about the Templars as an enemy is that they do just that.)  

Their leader (who had not been the one who grabbed Daisy, but rather had faced off against Lavellan), was talking to his men, giving out instructions in that same low voice he’d used earlier.

Battle changes your perceptions:  time moves slower, your heart races, your palms sweat, and the world seems gets brighter as your pupils dilate.  You find yourself noticing minute details, but missing the obvious, like the time I was so busy impaling a man that I didn’t know he’d swiped his dagger across my chest, and spent the rest of the battle with my tits out.  

(We won that one, by the way; through distraction, the Chief says.)

So I can’t tell you how long it took, or what everyone said, or even quite where everyone was standing.  What I _can_ tell you is, a lot of things happened very quickly:

Daisy had looked down at her hands, and was watching the blood as it slowly pooled; now she turned her hands sideways, and the drops rolled off her palms and fell.  For a moment, they seemed to hover in the air, then the red splatters hit the dusty road beneath our feet.  They didn’t make a noise, but they seemed like they should.

Daisy looked up, face set, and her eyes closed and opened again, once:  deliberately.  

Cole appeared suddenly from nowhere behind the _magus Venatoris_ , stiletto neatly sinking into the taller man’s windpipe, jaw, and then brain.  

Daisy flexed her hands, and the blood arched outward like the knife had struck an artery on each side, except that it hadn’t, because a second ago her blood had been pooling calmly.

Lastly, suddenly, lightning-like power raced around the clearing, striking like a tempest, furious and cacophonous, until Cole was the only one standing on a rocky outcrop full of dead men.

I was so stunned I barely heard the Inquisitor say stubbornly, “I _told_ you she was a mage!”

  
  


It took three hours to get from the ambush site to our camp that night.  We made the trip largely in silence, Daisy back in the bed of the wagon.  I know the Chief was waiting until camp that night to speak, because this was definitely the kind of thing he would want to talk about in private; I have expected Pavus to go up to Daisy and start talking shop, but apparently he wasn’t a complete ass, because he held off.  

And I _definitely_ wasn’t talking to her.

I kept replaying it in my head:  the moment when she tilted her hands and let the blood drop, the arch as it sprayed outwards.  I tried to remember if I’d seen any demons, but no, it had seemed to just be the lightning.  

Bad enough, really, because there was _no way_ it wasn’t blood magic.  

I remembered the scratches I’d seen on her arms the first night I’d met her.  Except, they’d seemed oddly deep for scratches, and could easily have been made by a sharp knife.  Other memories followed the scratches (cuts) in:

Daisy saying, _“It takes a mage to make a real healing potion,”_ and then watching me as I swallowed and drew the false conclusion.  

Daisy not meeting my eyes as she said, _“I_ _wanted to help, I wanted to make a difference, but the things I could do…  what I learned with the Clan… it wouldn’t let me pass un-noticed.”_ Because people fucking notice mages, don't they?

The look on her face as she said, _“I tied her up in a Templar dungeon near Val Chevin, and I’ve been dragging her around in chains ever since.”_

I shivered.

 _Then_ I remembered thinking that Daisy was too harmless, too nice, for her Deep Dark Secret (and this was _definitely_ the Deep Dark Secret) to be anything _all that bad,_ and I wanted to laugh like the hurlock in that old tale of the darkspawn, because as secrets go, blood magic was pretty fucking bad. 

I found myself swamped by a flood of loneliness out of nowhere, and all I wanted was to get to Skyhold, grab Fenris, and _never let go._

That must have been part of it, too:  I had been missing _my_ Elf, and when Daisy showed up, nice and seemingly harmless and willing to hug me without wanting anything more, it filled a hole.  So I let her, and I didn’t look too closely.  

In other words, I was homesick, and I let it make me clumsy.

And now I was just sick.

 

There was an Inquisition outpost at the western tip of Lake Calenhad, what some people would call the tip of the bunny’s left paw if they thought Lake Calenhad looked like a bunny (which it _does not,_ and anybody who says it _does_ is clearly mad).  It was where we’d been bound for that night, but that morning, we had made such good time that we’d been debating passing through it and going another couple of hours.  

Now, of course, we stayed the night.  

The Inquisitor ducked into the office of the woman in charge (a Fereldan Teyrna who moved like a pissed-off cat and who would have been beautiful, if not for all the scars), taking his left glove off as he went, and came out a minute later with room assignments.  And then, finally, three hours after we left that damned ambush site, we were all sitting around a table in private, and we could talk.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a lot of characters I've made for other things in this fic; that Teyrna at the end is alternate-reality Teyrna Cousland. Anise from the first chapter is alternate-reality Inquisitor Trevelyan. Neither is still the Warden/Inquisitor for purposes of this fic, but I mean, I had the characters just lying around, so...


	11. The Argument

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is substantially shorter than the others, because I could either do one short and one normal, or one really long, chapter, and the pacing was better this way.
> 
> Plus, this way it gets out sooner.

 

 

 

“How _did_ you do it?”  Pavus sounded more intrigued than anything.  

Daisy shook her head.  “It’s fairly simple,” she said, “but it requires an understanding of the basic nature of blood magic.  Since you don’t practice that, I doubt you would understand.”

Pavus snorted.  “You’re right,” he agreed snidely.  “I wouldn’t.”

Daisy flushed.  “In any other discipline of magic, people who don’t practice _withhold_ judgement of those who do,” she pointed out, her lilting accent distorting the words.  “Why is blood magic so different?”

Pavus’ voice was more directly honest than I had ever heard it when he answered, “Blood magic is evil.  It is, necessarily, cruel, because you can’t shed blood without hurting someone.”

Daisy shook her head.  “It’s just a tool,” she countered firmly.  

“Faught an awful lot of demons summoned with that ‘tool’,” said the Chief.

“I don’t summon demons,” she said.

“...Anymore,” prompted the Inquisitor quietly, looking up from the ale he’d been playing with.  

Daisy froze guiltily.  “Anymore,” she agreed softly.  

She closed her eyes and sighed.  “I know that hubris is my sin,” she said.  “I err, over and over again, always from overconfidence.  But I learn from my mistakes.

“When I summoned demons, I did so believing that I could control them and banish them, and that any costs would be my own.”  She flicked a glare at Dorian.  “I have _always_ ensured that any costs are my own.”  Shook her head.  “But I have learned that demons will enact costs from more than one person, and it no longer seems worth the risk.  So no, I don’t work with them… anymore.”  She took a drink and shook her head again.  “Anyway, blood magic and demon summoning are completely different things.  

“You asked how the spell worked?  It works because there is power in blood; that’s _all_.  It doesn’t matter how the blood gets spilled, it doesn’t matter what you do with the power; if you are using the power in the blood, that’s considered ‘blood magic’.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “And it’s nonsense.  Almost any spell that can be cast with blood can also be cast with semen, and you don’t see the Chantry saying anything about _that.”_  Pavus made a choking sound, and I took one glorious moment to memorize the look on his face.

She continued, “So then, here is my Red Lace Dress:  I convince my magic that since the power is in the blood, it is _sealed_ in the blood, and it is not reaching out to the world around me unless the blood itself does.  And it works!  The same way!  Every time!  It works because blood magic is a _tool,_ like a hammer or a shovel; nothing more.”

“But a shovel isn’t predicated on the pain of others,” said the Inquisitor, sounding miserable.  

Daisy was opening her mouth to respond when another voice cut in: “A sword is.”  

They looked around to see who had spoken, and I was surprised to realize that it was me.    

“Krem?”  Iron Bull’s voice was very neutral.

I flushed, and shrugged.  “I don’t know if what she says about the blood magic is true or not; I’m not a mage.  But I do know that there are mages I trust at my back.  And there are swordsmen I wouldn’t trust to spit on a fire.”

“Almost no one takes up the sword wanting to slay others, though,” observed Cole, voice muted.  “A man fights to defend his family, his home, his honor.”  

Daisy sighed miserably.  “The only blood spell I use now anyway is the Red Lace Dress.”

“What about the lightning today?  The really powerful lightning that happened right after your blood started acting funny?”  My voice was dark with suspicion. 

Pavus snorted.  “That was actually a well-known spell called Tempest,” he explained.  

I frowned at him.  “Dalish casts Tempest sometimes.  It doesn’t usually look like that.”  

Daisy looked embarrassed.  “Well,” she said, “I’m actually quite good.”

The fire cracked on the hearth, and we drank.  Just as I was finishing my draught, the Inquisitor brought his tankard down firmly, making an attention-drawing _thunk._  “Do you still intend to serve the Inquisition?” he asked Daisy, looking her squarely in the eyes.  

I had a moment of disorientation, remembering the awkwardly bubbly young man whom I had first met.  There was almost nothing of him left, here; command agreed with him, but it had left him changed.

Daisy’s gaze, in return, was sober, with none of the giddiness I remembered from the cave.  “If you’ll have me,” she said, and I could hear in her voice that she expected the answer to be _no._

I shut my eyes.

“I believe you will be an excellent asset to the Inquisition,” Lavellan said with finality, and the Chief grunted.  “However, so long as you serve us, you will refrain from any use of blood magic.”  He leaned forward, and his feet, which had been propped on a nearby chair, swung to the ground.  “For one thing, I want you joining our mage corps, making it counter-productive to lock away your magic.”  

Daisy nodded, hope and caution warring on her face.  

Lavellan sighed, watching her.  “It’s possible you’re right, and blood magic bears no more moral unsuitability than a sword.  Your intentions in using such spells were good, at any rate, of that we’re certain.”  

“Are we?” Pavus asked pointedly.

“Don’t be an ass, Dorian.”  The Inquisitor didn’t even look at him, although his tone was all exasperated  affection.  “None of that matters, though,” he told Daisy.  “You will refrain from the use of blood magic, not only because of its inapplicability, and not only because of the ethical implications of its use, on which we will agree to respectfully--” He met Pavus’ eyes and raised an eyebrow. “--disagree, but also because of the social implications.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said.  “I understand.  The Inquisition cannot be seen to be harboring blood mages, because the ignorant ones who despise without understanding still have too much power.”  Her lips twisted.  “It’s a familiar problem.”

He didn’t flinch at all, but the Dalish was back in his voice when he answered.  “You can’t fight a war on two fronts, Daisy.  Let’s get them to stop fearing _all_ the mages first.”

There was a final, tense moment, and then Daisy bowed her head, nodding, and her shoulders dropped.  

I rose, and went to bed.

  
  


I woke in the morning lying on my side, turned toward the wall with my knees drawn up.  Sitting at the foot of the bed, curled up in a ball with her head resting against the wall, was Daisy.  She wasn’t touching me, and it wasn’t a large bed.

She snored, lightly.  

I huffed a little sigh, turning onto the other side without touching her, and swung my legs to the floor.  I dressed quickly, shoving into my boots, and grabbed my pack before heading out to the stables and practice yard.  I turned back at the door of the room, giving her one last look.

Her eyes were open, but she said nothing as she met my gaze.

I turned and headed out for morning practice.


	12. Skyhold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No mas! All done! Thank you for reading, all. ^_^

 

Daisy caught me after practice with a mug of hot tea and a basket of still-warm sausage rolls.  “Can we talk?” she asked, and I nodded.

She put the basket down on the driver’s footboard of the wagon, and we stood awkwardly next to it, me with a roll in hand, her with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold.  Well, it was chilly out; yeasty steam rose from my sausage roll as I bit into it.  

She watched Lavellan and the Chief sparring, movements still a little clunky from the early hour, although by now they were largely warmed up.  I stayed silent; I had the feeling she was having a hard time saying whatever-it-was, and I wasn’t going interrupt her thoughts.  Finally, she grimaced, grabbed a sausage roll, and clenched it in her fingers.  “Do you hate me now, then?” she asked.  

I snorted as Lavellan gave a convincing enough left-fake to draw the Bull forward.  “No,” I said, and then winced, because I hadn’t meant to sound so pissed off about it.

Daisy gave me a side-eye, which was probably fair.  I grabbed another roll.  

“You sound like you hate me,” she said cautiously.

“I’m sure I do.”  Alright, too much, Krem.  “It’s not you,” I added.

“I lied to you.”

“Well, yeah.  You were really bad at it, though.”  She snorted, and nibbled at her mauled roll.  “Look, it’s not…”  Lavellan got a solid hit on the Bull, and we both winced.  “Do you know how long I’ve mistrusted blood magic?”

“Forever?” she asked morosely.  

“No, only since I left the army,” I said seriously.  “Before that…  Everyone _said_ ‘no blood magic’, but then the entire magisterium _practices blood magic_ , so it’s a bit…”  I waved my sausage roll vaguely.  “Any rate, it’s only since leaving the army that I’ve seen the pattern of how rarely ‘blood mage’ and ‘good person’ go together.  It’s been pretty consistent since then, though.”  

She nodded, miserable.  The Bull hit the Inquisitor with the shield bash in the morning sunlight, and we winced again at the _thwack._  

“So you don’t hate me, you just don’t trust me,” she summarized.  

I shook my head.  “I trust you fine; I can’t say this enough, you were _really bad_ at lying.”  She laughed, wetly.  “I underestimated your ability to misdirect me, but you almost never lied to my face.  And it’s pretty hard to fake genuine kindness, so really, I do trust you.”  The Chief and the Inquisitor went backwards and forwards in a series of blows almost too fast to see, ending with a dodge by Lavellan that put him behind the Bull with his sword at the Bull’s back.  “I guess…  It’s not that I don’t trust _you._  It’s that I don’t trust my trust.”  

Daisy took a heartier bite of her roll, chewed, and swallowed before answering.  “...That sounds stupid.”

I laughed, and we were both startled by how loud it sounded in the morning air.  “It really does,” I agreed.

I raised my arm, and a one-armed invitation to hug _still_ looked like, _Hey, look over there,_ but she knew what I meant anyway, and wrapped her arms around me.  She smelled like hot bread and sage, and she was just short enough I could rest my chin on her head.  

So I did.

 

Daisy drove that day, possibly as a form of apology; I sat in the back of the wagon, knitting away at another scarf.  I had worked my way through all of the Chargers, now; this one was dark green and navy blue and mottled gray like a finch, and I thought I might present it to Lavellan if it came out alright.  

It was different sitting in the wagon while healed, though; the close space chafed, and I found myself almost tossing and turning like it was a sleepless night.  Several times, I let my hands lower to my lap as I scowled out at the retreating scenery; it was like I was searching for something, but couldn’t see it in front of my face, and I found myself irritated by the rhythmic clanking of items secured to the wall of the wagon.

My gaze fell on the books Daisy had taken with her from the Wilds; after some consideration, though, I left them where they were, and opted to nap, instead.  

After lunch, I moved up front, and sat with a lazy arm around Daisy as we made our way along the twisting road into the Frostbacks.  

 

I was driving alone in the front again when we arrived at Skyhold in the midst of a gentle drizzle.  The thing about Skyhold is, there’s a really long stone bridge leading from the road to the castle, so you can’t make it to the gate without them knowing who you are, even in shitty weather.  

So I really wasn’t surprised to drive the wagon in behind the Chief to find a knot of people swirling around:  the Inquisitor was back, the Chief was back, and both points were significant.  Towards the back of the knot was Anise and Charles and an open space which probably meant Gertrude was there being short, and Dalish and Rocky were on the other side, but I didn’t care because at the front of the knot was Fenris.  

I was off the cart as soon as we’d pulled in under the wall.  There were reports to be made and errands to be run and someone would need to pull Daisy out of the cart and introduce her around, but in the meantime...

Fenris grabbed me, and I held on.  

Maker, I needed this.

I needed to not move for the next _year,_ just staying warm and safe and loved in Fenris’ arms.   I buried my nose in his neck and sniffed, drowning in the scent of _home,_ sword oil and leather and a faint hint of cinnamon.  “Hey,” I said helplessly, and impossibly his arms tightened around me.  

He raised his right hand to my head and tangled it in my hair, pulling my head down.  There was a lot of noise behind and around us as people welcomed the Inquisitor back, but I tuned it out, focusing on the most important--the _only_ important--thing in the yard.  I knew Dalish was in the yard behind Fenris, and I would look up and talk to her in a minute, really, because I loved her like a sister, but, for now…

I huffed again, taking in the _home_ smell.  “I missed you,” I said quietly.

I could _feel_ his little smile against my neck.  “I missed you, as well,” he said, but the way his arms wrapped around me said it louder.  

Then a dwarven voice, about three feet away down and to my right, said, _“Daisy?”_ in an incredulous tone, and I started to pull back to reality.  

“Varric!” said Daisy, and I didn’t need to turn around to see the sunbeam-smile.

 _Of course_ she knew Varric.   _Everybody_ knew Varric.  And that would have been all the explanation I needed, really, except that then _another_ voice came from ten feet beyond the dwarf, feminine and high-pitched with surprise, saying, _“Merrill?!”,_ and now I actually did need to look up.  

Daisy (or _Merrill,_ apparently, and also _seriously?)_ was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and I suspected it was taking all her control not to literally do a happy dance.  “Hawke!  What are you doing here?”

“Merrill?” asked Fenris, stunned.  

Daisy looked over, and I saw the moment she recognized him.  It was immediately followed by the moment she shrieked and hugged him so hard it was pretty much a tackle.  Since he still had his left arm around my waist, she wound up tackling me, too.

I didn’t really mind at all.

 

They actually continued the training program, the one designed to make the Inquisition officers think like Chargers.  It took some arguing, but the main decision came down to a conversation (alright, a _loud_ conversation) between myself, the Chief, the Inquisitor, and Commander Cullen, late one evening two days after my return to Skyhold.

Basically, the Chief wanted the whole thing done, and he had a point; the Chargers were valuable in large part because of how we worked as a team, and splitting us up all the time wasn’t doing anyone any favors.  

Commander Cullen, on the other hand, wanted the whole thing to continue as before, because there weren’t enough tasks that the Chargers were suited for that neither the regular Inquisition forces nor Sister Nightingale's people could do.  He thought that this was the best way to use us, and honestly, he _also_ had a point: we were definitely specialists, and in the wake of the Inquisition’s spreading success, we were less and less appropriate to the challenges available.  

The Inquisitor also wanted the program to continue, but he wasn’t saying why.  He had that serious look, though, the one that he’d had before he went out to face an archdemon and bring an avalanche down, and I think that’s when I realized the program _would_ continue, whether the Chief was in favor or not.  I wasn’t really happy about that, though, even before I heard about Skiff.

“He _made_ it?  What do you mean he made it?”  I was sure my voice had cracked in there.  

“He wasn’t killed when the dragon hit him,” Cullen confirmed.  “Just knocked out.  When Anise, Charles, and Gertrude went to retreat, they also were going to retrieve the bodies, but there wasn’t much… well… _left_ of Jean or Petros…”  I nodded.  “...and Skiff turned out not to be a body, so they just woke him up and got him out of there.”  As an afterthought, he added, “I believe Gertrude carries smelling salts as a matter of habit.”

I nodded again, slowly.  “In which case,” I said, voice tense with anger, “I am no longer constrained by my reluctance to speak ill of the dead.”

They all three looked at me sharply, a similarity in their gazes which would have been funny under other circumstances.  

“Say more,” the Inquisitor ordered.

“Here’s the problem with this stupid program,” I said levelly.  “The difference between us--” I indicated the Bull and I.  “--and your officers is, the Chargers are the best.  We don’t take anybody else.  But I didn’t have any choice in my crew for this project of yours, and, I am _so sorry_ to tell you--”  That was definitely a lie.  “--Some of the members of that team of mine were absolutely fucking terrible.”

“Yes, I know,” said Cullen, nonplussed.

“You… you _what?”_

“I knew some of the officers assigned to you Chargers were... unacceptable.  Particularly, those under your care, Krem.”  

“Why?” asked the Iron Bull murderously as I realized my mouth was hanging open.

Cullen frowned at our anger.  “I have enormous respect for Lieutenant Aclassi’s abilities both as a leader of men and as a leader of forces,” he answered the Chief.  “I believed that he could work with the men under his command to improve their weaknesses, be it their shyness, as with Charles, or their tendency to go off alone, as with Anise, or their general ineptitude, as with Lord Skiffington.

“I believed, and still believe, that Lieutenant Aclassi would achieve--in some cases, _has achieved--_ a beneficial effect on his charges’ deficiencies.  Accordingly, I gave him a somewhat higher burden of, well… of duds… than the other Chargers.  Fenris and Skinner, for contrast, received more average teams, as I thought their more... reticent dispositions might make them poor instructors.”  Cullen tipped his head to the side, wryly.  “For that matter, Grim has two on his team whom I would train to succeed me directly.

“The whole purpose of the exercise was to improve my officer staff,” he finished.  “I therefore gave you the ones who most needed improvement, and you most of all, Krem, because you could handle it.”

I was staring at him, stunned; the Bull was more in control of his face, but his shoulders were telling me that he was wrong-footed at being outmaneuvered.  

The silence was broken by the Inquisitor’s soft snicker, and I suddenly saw the humor in it and started chuckling.  

Cullen began to look abashed.  “I take it I should have spelled it out more clearly?”

 

Twenty minutes later, the Inquisitor was peeling off from the Chief and I, on his way to meet Sera for what sounded like a very dodgy sort of fun.  “It's actually useful,” he promised, and the Chief nodded, although he rolled his eyes.  “It helps people relax and laugh together, and we certainly could use more of that.  Plus it helps Sera, and I know how important that is despite her best efforts to be underestimated.”  His smile lit up his face, making some of the strain of the last hour fall away.  “I’m just glad Solas and Blackwall are off with Vivienne right now; they’re definitely her three favorite targets.”  

And off he went, dodging into the Herald’s Rest with a lightness that belied the stiffness in his shoulders.

“So how do you feel about this?” asked the Bull once we were alone.  

“Hm?  Alright, I guess.  The ability to get rid of those who are hopeless should make a big difference to us.”  Because that was the deal we had settled on: the training program would continue, as long as the Charger in question could veto the hopeless ones.

“I’m surprised you kept Charles.”

I looked at my feet.  “He wasn’t too bad, I guess,” I said, but the Bull quirked an eyebrow at me and I folded.  “Cullen said he was shy, but I'd thought he was stuffy.”  I shrugged.  “I may have done some judging of my own.  And I’m willing to allow the possibility that I was wrong.”

“Huh.”  He chewed that over, and one horn dipped towards his shoulder as he tilted his head at me.  “Second chances?”

“Everyone should get one,” I offered, remembering a scared runaway in a tavern with a maul coming towards his head.

“Huh.”  Bull looked out over the ramparts as we walked, and didn’t notice at first when I stopped at the entrance to the Armory.  

“Have a good night,” I called to him, and he turned back, startled.  “I’m meeting my team here,” I explained.  “Anise, Gertrude, and Charles; ‘We’re not dead yet’ drinks.”

“Ah,” he answered, and then studied me for a minute.  “Well, good luck.” He nodded sharply and turned, continuing his circuit around the walls.

 

The next morning, I woke early, cold in the mountain air even with my blanket, and dressed absently, wandering up to the battlements with the vague thought of going for a morning run around the keep.  As I came around the corner from the stairs, though, I saw a circle of elves sitting, stretching, and chattering:  Fenris, Dalish, and Skinner, doing seated leg stretches; the Inquisitor, casually balanced on his forearms with his legs kicking loosely in the air; and Daisy--Merrill--propped on her elbows, cheek pressed to the ground with one leg twisted flat underneath her.  

Each of them wore a warm, soft, hand-knit scarf.

 


End file.
